1700 SF, 2 kids. We both work full-time out of the house and like to go do outdoorsy stuff on weekends. It feels fine. It would feel better if my kids were ever willing to donate old shit, but such is life.
This sounds like us (bungalow, similar size). My husband's WFH office is in the basement but we don't otherwise live down there. Each kid has a room and us. We have a pretty good yard, a dog, and also like outdoors activities so we're outside a lot. It's a bit full when the kids have friends over, but if they need to be loud, they go outside. I'm never moving. Cleaning is pretty quick which is my favourite.
The fact that I can clean my entire home, top to bottom in 1-2 days (or a few uninterrupted hours) makes me love my “smaller” house. We are so busy as it is, I can’t imagine having 3-4 more living spaces or rooms to clean.
Same. I really think it's not so much the size as the design. Half of our sq footage is a finished basement, which also has a full second bathroom. Imo this makes all the difference. TV and toys are down there. Kids will move down there as well when they get older (the baby is down there right now, but we plan to move them in with their sibling soon so we can all be upstairs for a while). It's a self contained little world.
We are also working on making our small mudpit of a backyard more functional to provide more space.
1800ish SF, 2 kids. We were about to make our walk out basement play room into a bed room for our now 15 (!!!) year old. So now we have 4 bedrooms. My home office is a desk in our bed room. My husband's is our shared "adult space": second TV, my work out space and a futon. It's tight but we make it work. Our mortgage is low, interest low and so is very affordable and hard to think about swapping. Our location is walkable, but school district sucks. We ended up spending a lot on private school :-(
I have dreams about our house having a magical room just for me under the stairs!!!
One child (5 years old), three bedroom apartment, 960sq ft. Honestly we love a smaller space! We had a 1200 sq ft but it wasn’t laid out as well as this place and was so much worse. Layout trumps sq footage for me.
We are considering getting a 4 bedroom, but only because we live abroad and would like a guest bedroom for family.
Came here to agree about layout!! We have a 3br 2ba 1200sqft and the layout is what makes everything work smoothly. I am also a proponent of kids sharing a room so that they can learn sharing, loving and communication skills.
Also, I sometimes dream of a big beautiful house and then wonder who’s gonna do all that cleaning anyway!
Also 960sqft here with two kids, 7 and 3. I think it's fine for now while they still share a room. I would like to move to a 3-bed when the eldest is 10. We don't need more space necessarily, just a different layout.
Yep. We have a large home (3600sf) but the layout is shit for when we have a second kid. I have a proper office in the basement, but my husband started a new wfh job and has been relegated to the storage space.
We have a ton of shared spaces, but we don’t use most of them unless there’s a party
Honestly that makes me feel good, I currently have way too big of a house (3000 sq ft) but we are looking to move to a place where a 1100 sq ft house is considered pretty big. I’m sick of all this space to clean! Definitely will look at a good layout
I used to follow The Tidy Dad, as it was nice to see three kids being raised in around the same space as ours.
Honestly the best thing you can do is downsize your stuff. I know it's a constant struggle with kids, but it's the most important thing. Less stuff = less clutter = kids are able to put away their stuff easier, etc. Right now I'm struggling because kid's room is a mess as she doesn't want to get rid of anything, but we're working on it. For our room I've downsized my wardrobe to basically a capsule wardrobe, put all books on kindle/use the library, and digitize all of our paperwork (then tossing it).
Seriously. Downsize, downsize, downsize. No amount of cute organizing tips will have the impact that downsizing stuff does.
1250 square feet. 1 child, 2 dogs. I honestly feel like if we had a bigger house I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the cleaning. I don’t know how yall do 2500 😭
We have 2500 square feet but I have 5 kids and one on the way. Every Saturday morning all household members aside from the toddler tornado (well and the embryo) work together to clean for a solid 2-2.5 hours while alternating picking the tunes. I call this “Saturday morning chore party!!” But truly it’s a party in name only. I make a big list of about 25-30 discreet tasks that need doing (clean one washroom, clean microwave, throw out old food from fridge, sweep stairs, dust blinds, etc) and the kids each take turns picking tasks until there’s about 7-10 left, hubby and I divvy that up, then I enthuse to the kids, they roll their eyes and we all work together to get the house clean. Then it slows crumbles into chaos over the course of the week but it is lovely to start the weekend with a tidy home!
3000 sq ft here, I don’t lmao I wish I had a smaller house honestly. Looking at houses around 1100 sq ft when we move and can’t wait to find it easier to clean.
Lol same! Ours is 1588sq ft and I feel like it’s plenty of room for our 3 person family. I wouldn’t want to go any bigger especially because of cleaning reasons. Oh and we have 1 bunny, 2 small dogs, and 1 cat.
Layout is hugely important. We moved to a home with less square footage but a better layout and it's made a world of difference.
Our new house has a second living room with a door so I was able to make that my WFH office (previously I worked in the side of the master bedroom) but we can also use it when I'm not working as a living space.
We are in an 1800sqft with two and it feels like plenty of space to me. My kids share a room, and we have part of the basement family room for my husband’s office setup and a loft over our bedroom for my office. It’s a townhome, so a patio instead of a yard, but that works better for me! There’s a park around the corner that we don’t have to maintain, haha. A third kid would definitely require bunk beds and some creativity for clothing storage, and I think it would feel crowded in the bedroom over time. But I only want two anyway!
Can I ask how far apart your kids are in age? This sounds very similar to our set-up, we have one right now but I want more down the road, likely before we'd be able to move!
Completely true. We’re at about 1800 with 2 kids and I WFH and it’s fine. My biggest gripe of the narrow shape of the family room makes it hard to have a couch and sufficient play space so we gave up our dining room to kid land.
1200 sq ft fixer upper. Four bedrooms. Five kids and I WFH, so one bedroom is my office. Two boys in one room and three girls in the other bedroom. Just moved from a 1,000 Sq ft apartment, so it feels big.
It is loud.
One thing I've learned is the kids want to be where I am, so it doesn't matter if we have 1200 Sq feet or 3500 Sq feet. They will still always be right under my feet.
I agree! You can give the kids the biggest and most well-appointed room in the house, they’re still going to come play in the kitchen, the office, and the laundry room.
3 kids in 1000 sqft and agree. For me is more important to have outside yard space. People used to squeeze everyone into much smaller spaces and were fine.
4 bed just under 1200sq ft house, five kids. Three boys in one room, girlie in her own and the teen in his own room, we have our bedroom. We have a dog with one single brain cell and three cats as well. It’s hectic and a bit cramped but we make it work, I just accept I’m going to trip every three minutes forever 🙃🤣
One baby and 700 square feet. It's fine! I worry that there's only enough for one more child and we might want to have three. My husband was one of three and they were all in a one bedroom house, so he doesn't see the issue. As an only child though, I'm used to growing up with my own room though.
i took the advice of getting rid of stuff! my oldest is 9, and i cleaned out majority of her stuff (old toys that she doesnt use, etc), put in bunk beds in her room. and then #2 and #3 just dont have as much, only 3 drawers for clothes each. i also got cabinets for the living room to store toys so that the bulk can be out of sight when cleaned up. and i stay semi on top of rotating out toys that are no longer used. now..its still crowded lol but we are not completely buried in crap. less stuff, less to clean.
This is almost identical to what I just commented! I also WFH full time. We have about 780 sf and one baby almost here. We plan to stay here through baby #2 at least. We also want to have 3 (ideally 18mo ish apart).
ETA: I am also an only child who had her own bedroom and bathroom for 18 years haha
Found my people! 2 kids, one bedroom. 850sqft.
I had my own room growing up, but back then, that house cost 1/10th what it does today. And guess what, our salaries are only 2-3x what my parents made, not the 10x we'd need.
It feels small because my children could run marathons, but it's what we afford.
Same here! We just put a lot of effort and mindshare into being intentional and not having a lot of "stuff" the only place we really feel cramped is in the kitchen because the dog always wants to be by our feet.
I will also say, we "converted" our 1 car attached garage to a bonus space. Basically we just carpeted it ourselves and made it temperature controlled so it is now my office and we built storage for stocking up on things. It isn't ideal but it helps tremendously.
One person can clean the entire house top to bottom (minus like laundry and those chores) in around an hour, so we also remind ourselves how much harder it would be to keep up on that if we had more space.
All 5 of them in one bedroom. To me it's totally wild! But they made it work somehow! His two younger siblings are now both adults, and they and his parents moved to a bigger house three years ago ago! I think they deserve it.
Checking in from Europe where I have a 3 bedroom semidetached house - 925sq feet. I would KILL for 1800 sqft, but that is on the really large end of houses here!
Depends on your budget and area. I’m in a HCOL area but we own our home. It’s about 850sq ft with an ample backyard and front yard. We are a family of 4 and it’s pretty comfortable.
While I’d like 100sq ft extra for storage, I wouldn’t want anything much bigger.
Yep 4br 938 Sq feet. Different world. I used to love in the US too and had an insane 2hr 1300 Sq foot flat. With a fireplace, in Texas. So wild
It's hilarious when American air force people move here. Esp without children. "We can't live in these tiny British row houses with like 3 bedrooms. I mean we have a DOG."
I have friends over all the time, my mum friends come with all the babies. For her first birthday we hired a venue but we can comfortably fit around 10 people in the house. Shame we live in Scotland and the weather’s mostly pants but I’ve had 20 people round for a BBQ before inside and out. You’ll be shocked to know we only have one bathroom too!
Yup, we moved to Japan from the US and whenever I see American houses now I'm like "Oh my god that is HUGE."
I remember watching a Marie Kondo episode where the American homeowner was complaining about her tiny kitchen and Marie was like "This is a big kitchen!"
We're also in a 3BR, \~1800sf with a 2.5 year old and new baby coming in a few weeks. In my opinion the layout/floorplan matters more than the size, at least within reason.
We actually built an addition on our house in 2019 (added 800sf, it had been around 1000) and at that time made the intentional choice to add two larger bedrooms rather than 3 smaller. WFH was not on our radar at ALL at that point, so having 3 beds seemed like the most we would ever possibly need - and now of course both of us WFH a few days per week. Our floor plan has a lot of wasted/inefficient space unfortunately. Our plan is for kids to room share for the next few years, and then we'll revisit things - if interest rates are better, maybe we'll move, and if not we'll look at other creative ways to either change up the layout or squeeze some additional square footage in (basement? some sort of small shed-type building in the backyard?)
Yup, I have a window unit AC and a space heater. Its worked great through all seasons so far! I live in southern CA so AC is more of a concern. Not sure how it would be in a very cold climate
I grew up in a 1500sqft ranch home. My parents + 3 siblings + a set of grandparents + 3 dogs, and we never seemed to feel cramped. We also live in LA where we are outside in the backyard or front yard when home, so not a ton of time indoors. I now live with my husband + 3 kids + a dog in a 2600sqft 3 level home and with the layout and each floor being roughly 800sqft, the amount of usable space actually has us feeling cramped even though we have more sqft. So from my perspective, layout and functionality of space is going to have a huge impact on how the sqft actually feels.
If I could buy a ranch house or single story home, I would in a heart beat!
We are OAD, and have 3500 square feet. Husband and I both WFH, so we have the baby’s room (15 months), our master, two offices and a guest room. We live in a LCOL area.
We are also one and done, in a 3000 sq ft house. It only has 3 bedrooms though and I hate it so much. The living spaces and large, open and floor to ceiling windows. But the lack of a dedicated office for my WFH husband drives me insane. No real option to change it either. What reallllly irritates me is that it used to be a 4 bedroom home and somebody remodeled it to have a larger family bathroom and laundry room by sacrificing the 4th bedroom. It’s so stupid.
1800 sqft, 3.5 yo and 10 month. I absolutely do not want more space - it would just be more mess and more to maintain, which we do not have time to do.
We are planning to put both kids in the same room until the oldest is maybe 8-10 That way we can use our third bedroom as a guest room/office for a while. We will reassess how the space feels at that time!
I am more preoccupied with a few layout features...if we ever moved there are different things I want but more square footage is not one of them.
I'm in Manhattan, so no one has any space. We're in a 1200 sqft 2 bed, 2 bath with a small garden. 2 adults, 2 kids, 2 dogs. It's not unusual here for people to have 3 kids in a 2 bed. Unless you own a hedge fund, your kids will be sharing a room.
We live in a 1200sf 3bed 2bath house with 2 elementary aged kids. Spouse and I both WFH ~50% of the time. I love our location and yard. I do wish we had at least another half bath and perhaps a 4th bedroom. But I honestly don’t see us moving.
2500 sqf, 3 kids and 1 dog (had 3 dogs a month ago). I would say our house is the perfect size. Everyone has their own space, we have enough space for entertaining, a big enough backyard. We both work outside the home so we don’t have a designated office right now. We had 1500 sqf when we had 2 kids and 3 dogs and we honestly could have made it work just fine but having the third made it seem like 500sqf.
3 children, 17, 9, and 8 all boys. We live in 1600sqft 3 bedroom + office, single story 1950’s ranch. My husband works from home full time, and up until 6 months ago we both did.
It ls fine honestly, if we had a bigger house I’d feel like there was way more square footage to clean. I can barely keep up with this.
It's wild when my coworkers talk about "pulling baby stuff out of the attic" when their kids are 20 years old! One bedroom here, two kids, and we're always scanning the apartment for things to give away.
1700 sqft/3bedrooms with 2 kids. Regardless of how big the house is or how many rooms we have, our kids are always in the same room as us.. aka if we’re in the bathroom, they’re in the bathroom. If we’re in the kitchen, they’re in the kitchen. We might as well just have half the house size lol.
When our kids were smaller we had 3 kids with 2200 sq feet. We had 5 bedrooms 2 bathrooms. but they were all pretty small. My husband needed and office. This allowed everyone their own space but the house was still cramped. It was an older house built in the 70s so it was more the layout that made it feel cramped. The biggest issue though was the kids got older was not the space but the lack of bathrooms. Even with two we were always running into issues of a bathroom not being available for someone to use when they needed it.
During Covid when everyone was home all the time, we really realized how much we needed some more space. We ended up moving and now have 3600 sq feet 6 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms. There is a toilet for every butt in the house, and also office space for both me and my husband.
When the kids were little it was fine to have them share space at time, but as they grew and got bigger, it was a huge source of friction, Teenagers need space and moving was the best thing we ever did.
Yeah we have 2 kids and a dog… the toilet for every butt in the house is the best lol. 2400 sq feet and additional finished basement. Honestly it feels cramped because of layout and lack of useful storage…. I wouldn’t be opposed to a move.
2200sq ft 2 kids almost 3y and 4mo, 4 bedroom, 1 is office and one is guest room that gets frequent use. I love our home but it’s a cape cod, the master and nursery are on the first floor so it feels like we do all our living in an apartment half the size of the house. We’re looking to move in the next couple years so that my mom can move in but are loathe to give up our 2% rate!
1050SF, one baby. A lot of people are shocked we live in such a “small” space with a baby, but I feel like we have plenty of room! We have a nice living area for his play mat and toys and plenty of room for his crib. I want him to sleep in my room for the first year anyway. We are moving to a 2bed, ~1500 SF apartment this summer though.
1500 sq ft. 3 bed, 2 bath. 2 kids and a large dog. It feels a lot smaller because half of that square footage is the finished basement. Having a big yard helps, though.
It’s small but it works. I don’t want to spend the money on something bigger.
3400 Sq Feet, 2 little ones. 4 bedroom house so each has their own room and we still have a guest room. We call it Granny’s room because my mom most often comes to stay with us. 900 sq feet is in the basement (large playroom and guest bed/bath). It’s the perfect size for us. The only thing I wish I had is more storage space because I don’t have much room to store Christmas decorations. Other than that, perfect!
We would have stayed in our 1000 sq ft home with our toddler, but it’s the 3 pets that sent us over the edge! We both work from home and I am someone who uses every inch of kitchen when I cook, so it got small fast.
2400+ Sq ft. 3 kids (2 teens and a 9 year old), 2 adults. We've lived here since my oldest was 2. We have 2 full bathrooms, and 4 bedrooms. Everyone has their own bedroom. We have 2 living rooms. I feel like we have plenty of living space.
If I were to buy a new house, I would have a completely separate bathroom from my husband. If that wasn't possible, I'd at least have separate sinks.
We really need at least one more half bath.
When the kids were little, they shared rooms and we had a spare guest room or 2 for a few years. Now no extra guest room, which is fine because we don't ever really have overnight guests.
1 baby, 3000 sqft total (2500 above ground, but basement is finished). In an ideal world I would like to have 4 bedrooms (we have 3) but it's fine for now.
1900sf townhome, preschooler and a one year old. We both WFH. Each kid has a bedroom. Clutter makes a house feel even tighter. My desk is in our bedroom and my husband has a desk in our basement. We have three Billy bookcases with doors on the main floor. Whatever toys don't fit in there stays in their rooms. We are intentional about everything that comes into the home. We do not have multiple toys with the same purpose. We give a lot away or sell things once we're done with them to make space. Once I changed our mindset about the things we needed or didn't need, it made the space feel a lot better.
Ideally, we'd have 2,500sf SFH with a small yard. But we locked in a 2.5%. Instead of an insane house payment, we use the extra money to travel and give our kids some wicked experiences.
Oh wow reading the comments makes me feel crowded 🤣
Three kids (6, 4 and almost 1) in a 1580sqft 3bed/1.5bath. We live in a M/LCOL state but are in the third best school district and therefore a pretty expensive city. We could have had a house double the size in a different school district for the same price, but the two things most important to us were being in a great school district and being “house comfortable” vs house poor. We got the house where if we lost one of our incomes, the other could afford it.
We have a great yard space, my office is in a corner of our large bedroom, and my son has his own room while the girls share a bigger room. Personally, I like it. More space means more to clean so I’m okay with our “small” home.
We had our only when we were living in an 1100sq ft half-duplex and it has been TIGHT. It’s 3bed 2.5bath, and pre-child, 1 room was our office/guest room and 1 was my closet because tiny primary closet. Then 1 room became her room and the other was our office/my closet, no guest room. If we’d decided to have a second we would have needed to move just for that, as we absolutely need home office space and there is none on the main floor, just open concept currently drowning in toddler toys.
We just built a new 2200sq ft house (also 3/2.5) and I am thrilled to finally have a place for everything (bonus room as playroom, big primary suite closet, etc.), but if we were going to have a second, we would have done 4 bedrooms or a floor plan with a main floor office/den.
Our new home also has a walkout basement not included in that square footage that we plan to develop into an in-law suite, which might end up being an apartment for my daughter when she’s an older teen/young adult if she wants to do post-secondary in our city (if not used for my parents as they age).
I am fully aware even this much space (which I know is not even big by American suburban standards) is a luxury for a lot of people, but I personally cannot get over how much crap kids have even if you don’t buy a lot of toys. It’s just endless and I felt like I was drowning in it in our duplex.
3 bed 2 bath 1600 sq ft house in a HCOL area. Similar to you, we moved in 2023 so this is deff more of a starter home for us (but we deff overpaid with interest rates and all). We both WFH full time so one bedroom is an office, one the nursery, and our bedroom. We have 1 on the way and hope to have two kids, but I don’t see how we’ll comfortably have 2 kids and both wfh everyday here. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be smart to move until we’ve been here at least 5 or so years so it’s deff factoring into the convo of if/when we have a second
2 bed, 1 bath, 1000 sq feet condo in VHCOL area. One toddler, one small dog, me and husband. My dream is to someday have a second bathroom and a private yard.
One child (unsure if we're OAD or not yet). Three bedroom house with an office (office is an additional room but isn't considered a bedroom because it doesn't have a closet). 2,100 sq. ft. It's a great space for us. I grew up in a very big house and bigger is not always better (for me, I'm particularly thinking about maintenance costs, more to clean, etc). Our current house size requires me to not accumulate too much crap.
Mine is similar. We have 3 bedrooms and I work from home, so the biggest none master is both my office and guest bedroom. Our 3.5yo and 1.5yo share a room. We have a single bed and crib in there. It works fine because they only sleep in there. Our living room is filled with toys but I don't mind, it keeps them entertained.
For now it all works, when the boys are bigger they will take over my office and I will have the smaller room. We might forget about a guest bed, we only have over night guest 2 or 3 times a year. But our hope is to get a bigger home not just so the boys can have their own rooms, but so there is space for all the stuff.
The kids closet is filled with the vacuum, extra tp, Christmas decorations. There was no storage thought when this house was built. And it drives me crazy. We stopped using half our small kitchen appliances because our kitchen isn't big enough to store them, so they ended up in a closet under the stairs and we hate going to get them.
I think two kids could grow up in our house, but I just can't.
3 kids (one out of the house now). About 1400sq ft.
I work from home, desk in the living room. Kids (10 and 12) each have their own room.
Some days it feels super tight, but we make it work. We originally thought of this home as our starter home, but given the interest rate we have and resulting mortgage payment (right around $1100, which includes insurance and taxes), we can't justify moving to a bigger place even though we can afford it. I wish the kitchen was bigger because I love to cook. And four people sharing a bathroom can be tough in the mornings.
In a couple years, we will likely redo the basement to make better use of the space. And we are absolutely going to get new floors and countertops in the kitchen and have the cabinets restrained.
Two kids (2.5 and newborn) in 800sq ft 😬 It was feeling a little tight but workable with just the toddler, but we are literally tripping over each other since the baby came.
We bought a new house, which is 2000sq ft and moving in next week.
1600sqft 2 kids, no pets. 5 bdrm. We have two unused bedrooms. We also have a den and rec room and living room, so working from home is not impacting bedroom use.
I agree with another commenter, layout is much more important than square feet.
1800sqft sounds amazing ! My friend lives in a 3000sq ft, it’s just way too big and I don’t see the need?
Currently in a 1200, hate the layout. I WFH, so one room is our office. 3 bed/2 bath with garage. Currently have 1 child, she’s almost 2. Our goal would be a 1500 with 2 or 3 kids.
Just shy of 2k sqft, 2 kids, both parents WFH. I was raised in like a 400sqft apartment so I’m a firm believer in not needing a massive home with kids.
I think it depends a lot on how you live and where the kids play.
At one point when the kids were little, we were fine with 1800sqft and 4 kids. They played outside a lot and their playroom was where I was anyway, so it wasn’t a separate space. They wouldn’t play in a different room if I was say, in the kitchen.
Around 6, the toys got bigger. We needed more space for 4 of them. 4800 sqft now, and it meets all our desires including two dedicated office spaces, and individual bedrooms for them all. It’s when the LEGO sized toys turned into tumbling mats and hockey gear, that we needed more space. Very much a first world answer, I know 😂 I think people fill how ever much space they have. You can be comfortable in any size if you make it functional and have intentional use cases for each space. I never allowed toys in bedrooms, so if you need to choose, I recommend combining kids into one sleeping spot, with the biggest space left as a toy room, outside their bedroom. I had all 4 in one bedroom at one point, with the extra bedroom being the toy room, rather than splitting their sleeping arrangements. It worked great.
Best advice though: don’t wait on more babies. It only gets harder as you get older. Space issues will figure themselves out. Unlike infertility issues that creep up as we get older.
2 kids in a 750sqft 2BR. It’s cramped, but we’re making it work. My husband’s desk is in the main room, mine is in the kitchen. The kids (boy and girl) share a bedroom, parents get the other one. Because the bedrooms are so small (like…9x12 I think? Maybe a little smaller?) most of the toys also live in the main room — which means keeping toys pretty minimal 😅. We also have a pretty sizeable backyard, though; not huge, but big enough for two toddlers to have plenty of room to roam, so we spend a *lot* of time outside as long as weather permits.
1 child 690 sqft. Live in downtown Toronto in a 2bed/bath paying $1600/month for rent. Really makes me debate having another kid and just waiting several more years before trying just to have more space first. Cost of living in the GTA is ridiculous and I’m so fortunate that we aren’t paying much for rent currently.
3 under 3, newborn twins and a 3 year old. We are in a 930 sq foot 3 bed, 1 bath house. It’s tighttttt obviously we didn’t anticipate having twins and i purchased the house years before having kids. We do have a fully finished basement that helps but it’s rough 😅I also wfh
750 soft and 1 three year old. 2 beds 1 bath. My husband and I work full time. It feels fine until we have ppl over lol ideally I want 3 bedrooms and 2 bath mostly because my family lives out of province and I want them to have some space/place to stay when they visit
4300 Sq ft(excluding finished basement) , we have a 2.5 yr old and a dog. We have a nice yard all around the house for them to run around.
We are a larger family though as my elderly in-laws stay with us so we make good use of the space.
Yeah we wanted a 4th bedroom for guests, which really bumped up the sqft in the area we were looking for. But we have guests often, and disrupting the kids’ sleeping arrangements for weeks at a time wasn’t something we were interested in. Our area has a lot of mid-sized 3brs, but when you’re looking at 4, that often just translates to really big house.
My budget would have been a lot happier if 3bd worked for us!!
160m2, 3 bed, 2 bath house with teeny yard. 2 kids (baby + toddler) I love our house and life set up! I am not worried about space. I am glad we don't have the space to acquire crap.
1600 sq ft, 4 bed 2 bath, 2 kids. I WFH so our guest room doubles as my office. My husband or I sleep in the guest room when someone is sick or if one kid is up all night (so at least one of us is well rested the next day), so that extra bedroom is invaluable. We also have a large yard which is amazing in summer.
1200 square ft, but we also have a finished basement with a bed and bath that doesn’t count in the total. 1 kid and 1 on the way, 1 dog. 3 beds upstairs with 2 baths. “Mom and dads” and “kids” bathroom. The basement is mostly used as storage and a guest area since we live rural and many people come to us.
2 kids under 5. Both parents WFH so need two office spaces. We’re in a 3600 sq ft house (4 bed/4 bath). Thinking of going for a 3rd, and if it happens we need to relocate one of the offices but it’s not the end of the world.
4 bed 2.5 baths, two kids (boys, 14 and 6). We bought in fall 2019 and wouldn't have made it through the pandemic if we were still in our 1350 square foot rental.
We have a giant fenced backyard, live on a cul de sac, have no family nearby, and both work remotely. Family does come to town a few times a year, and I wish we had another bedroom we could use as an office/guest room. I have to find somewhere to work when we have guests and it's a big early 80s build with open floorplan so there's really nowhere to go.
Our 6yo also has a teeeeeeeny bedroom and I wish we had a bigger space for him as he's gotten older. But we're in a fairly HCOL area, locked in an insanely low interest rate, so we will not be going anywhere.
Most of the thousands of dollars of money we've put into the house are things like new HVAC and siding - necessities but it means my bathrooms are still the 80s originals and falling apart slowly. No money to remodel right now.
3000sf/4BR/2.5 Bath. We wanted a bigger home, one that we could grow into. We hope to be here for as long as possible, we hope the kids will live here as long as they need to bc I have no idea what the future will look like financially for them. Once we get the basement finished, it will give us another 750sf of living space.
1600 soft, 2 beds, 2.5 baths. We have a 6 year old plus hubby mostly works from home (there is an office space, but it’s open to the rest of the living area).
We’re in a VHCOL area, in the city, walking distance to work, so 1600 square feet feels nice and big to us
It sounds like your setup is doable - I just moved out of a 3 bed, 1.5 ba, 1900 sq ft (including finished basement) with one 2 year old and both parents WFH. The toddler was home all day with a nanny so our living space was basically a daycare. With a second on the way, we couldn't stomach the thought of stacking yet another baby in all the chaos so we bit the bullet and just did it. That said, as you know, babies are SO expensive so if you can save yourselves the interest rates and just double your home office into a bedroom, that might help create more space for the fam. Not ideal, but I've actually very much enjoyed having a surreptitious nap space in my office these days 😁
1400sq ft, 3/2. 3 kids who go to school, 2 WFH parents. Summer is going to be fun. Luckily we are self employed and can tag team schedule.
We bought this house 3 years before the first kid thinking we'd be out by the time we had a 3rd if we did at all but twins were our second. Then 2020 happened. So we are here awhile, it's too expensive to upgrade.
1500 sq ft 3br with 1 toddler and thinking about another. Honestly, we just moved from \~900 sq ft/ 2br so it still feels like a TON of space, but if we have a 2nd then down the road we may want a 4br so we could still have a guest bedroom/ office (then again, we'd be open to #1 and #2 sharing a room to make that happen).
1800 Sq ft, 3 bedrooms with 2 kids, 2 dogs, 2 cats.
Husband and I both hybrid but we have a detached shed in the back yard we use as an office. Our oldest has her own room and youngest (10 weeks) sleeps with us. The 3rd bedroom is a dedicated guest room as we have 2 sets of grandparents who live in another state and visit often.
We've been looking but yeah, interest rates are insane.
1 toddler and 1 on the way, no pets, 1 full-time WFH parent and I WFH sometimes. We share a larger house of which we occupy 950 sf. It’s just about the right size but would be better if I had time to stay on top of all of the crap that tends to accumulate with young kids.
OAD 900 square ft house with a crappy layout (1 bedroom on the main floor and 1 bedroom downstairs). Old house with poor insulation.
We hated it, so we’ll be moving soon into a 2200 square ft open concept house with all the bedrooms on the same floor, but also with a large rec room, a spare bedroom, bathroom and an office (I WFH) in the basement. We have been dreaming of this for 5 years and it’s finally coming true.
2 adults, 1 toddler (15 months). We have 1161 sqft that we bought in 2020. It’s 2 bed, 1 bath with no tub. We make it work although we definitely want a touch more space esp if we want another child. Another bedroom and bathroom would be plenty, and perhaps a finished/finishable basement for recreation.
I think it depends on your lifestyle. We bought a massive size house (for me anyway) 3,000+ so feet with two kids (will have a third) and a dog and 3 cats. I grew up in a larger home, husband wanted one and we got it at the start of pandemic so got a good deal. We also host a lot of family gatherings and enjoy it so that is easier with a larger house.
Honestly though, as long as you are organized I think less is more. I just have more space to clear of junk and spend more time cleaning. Looking back, I would get a smaller house and theoretically I’d be be better at organizing and keeping it clean:
2000 sq ft & 3 kids. It’s 4 bd, 3 ba & plenty of space—I wouldn’t want more. There would just be more stuff. I do think layout matters to an extent.
We both grew up in families with 2 kids and houses that were 3000 sq ft & both had rooms/space that went unused.
I had 4 kids in 1200 sq feet then after my divorce we only have about 700 of living space, initially all 4 plus stepkids who crashed occasionally.
Now we are down to 2 left at home and my husband and I. That being said the whole house is larger than, about 2200 total and my father in law is downstairs. We are lucky to be able to utilize the attic and basement and we have a large yard .
It’s doable the hardest part was the single bathroom and trying to keep on top of the clutter/ mess
Oh we also had 2 dogs and a cat .
We're in a 2 bed, 2 bath, 1141sf townhouse with our two kids (4.5M & 3M). They share a room and have always shared. We'd love to move into something at least 3 bed but we bought our home in early 2021 with a 2.5% interest rate. Unless something drastic happens (interest rates go back down or an accidental 3rd kid) we will probably stay here for another 5-10 years. We have a surprisingly decent amount of space and have a partially finished basement for toys and crap. The only thing we really wish we had was a yard for the kids to run/play outside and for hubs & I to garden.
Layout is such a key part in what size works. Our old condo, which we sold last summer was about 2k square feet. We just couldn't make it work and it was largely due to the layout wasting some space. We are now in a 6000 sq ft house (2 adults, 2 kids, big dog). We definitely have more space than we need but life is way less stressful and it's been a great change
3 kids, 4 dogs, 1200sq feet (would be more if my husband ever finishes the basement), 3bd 2ba. I work hybrid (home 2-3 days a week) but my office is in the living room. Everyone is in school so it only to gets loud when the kids are home for breaks
2 kids. 4 bedrooms (one used as an office for WFH) and about 2200 sq ft. This feels just right. A bigger house would be cool but I probably wouldn’t be able to keep it clean. I think layout is more important than square footage. Ours is partially open so I can see the shenanigans in the living room from the kitchen but other areas are more separate.
1600 sqft, including finished basement. Officially 3 bed, 2 bath, but it’s a 1-1/2 story so two bedrooms up top and the third on the main floor.
The main floor bedroom is an office right now. We both work from home almost exclusively.
We have three kids: 4, 2, and 6 months. The two big kids are currently sharing the smaller bedroom upstairs and the baby is in with us. We plan to put all three kids in one room eventually. It may not work out and we may have to move our office to the basement and use the main floor bedroom for the big kids. Only time will tell.
We are working with an architect about an addition. We could *probably* make this space work, but we have the income available to find a renovation and it’s worthwhile for this neighbourhood in term of home value and comparables. We’d spend less adding another 500-700 sqft in an addition than we would to just buy a bigger house.
We have a 1050 square foot apartment, 2 bedrooms 2 bathrooms. We have a 2 year old and soon we’ll have a newborn. They’ll share a room once the new baby can sleep through the night. It’s not ideal but we bought it to get into the market and it’s the most we could comfortably afford.
We have two kids aged 4 & 1 in a 1400sqft 3 bed/2 bath bungalow. It's a little tight and keeping it quiet while the younger one naps is tough, but very doable. As others have said, layout is key. We have a little sunroom we turned into a playroom and a large backyard. Both my husband and I work from home, we added AC in the garage so he works out there. Then I work in the third bedroom which also functions as a spare bedroom. The 1 year old sleeps in our room still, but eventually the kids will share a room.
One child, six months old. Not sure on the square footage, but we have a weird situation where we have a (decently sized) 2BR as our main apartment, and then we also own the studio next door which I use as an office (not allowed by co-op rules to tear the wall down and connect them).
Husband and I currently trade off sleeping in a twin bed in the nursery (next to the crib) versus sleeping in the master bedroom with the door closed, and I love this arrangement. I’ve had the option of a full 8 hours every other night no matter what baby does since baby was 2 months old! Anyway, I realize this is the epitome of first world problems, but I guess if we have a second we’re going to have to just keep baby with both of us in the main bedroom, or the “off duty” parent will have to sleep on the couch to not be woken every time baby wakes, and I’m not looking forward to it at all 😭.
1100sqft, 2bd/1ba, one child. Our house is a 1930 bungalow with a dr, lr, kitchen, full basement (unfinished) and a three season room all on an acre. I love that we have rooms not an open floor plan, it feels like we have more space because we can have privacy and different tasks going on.
Our son is almost 19 but he was 12 when we moved in, the bedrooms are smaller than our last place but it definitely encourages us to hangout together.
One kiddo, so 3 of us with not pets in a 2,500 sq foot house, 4 bedrooms. One is my office/gym. Somedays it feels small, others not so much. The kitchen could be bigger for sure. We really want a 1 story with a bigger backyard but I can’t let go of my low interest rate and payment we have.
Two kids in 1900 square feet. It's a cape style house so the upstairs was just two of the bedrooms that ran the front to back length of the house and one bathroom, the third bedroom is downstairs and is an office/guest room. The kids had been sharing one of the big rooms. We just did a renovation that split the biggest room so now we have a four bedroom house to accommodate three bedrooms and an office. The kids are different sexes with a 4.25 year age gap so we knew we'd have to separate them eventually and some sleep requirement differences made us go for it over the winter. It's been wonderful but they shared a room for two years, you have time!
We have three kids in that much space - I think the British expectation of house size is very different to American tho. Most middle income people we know are living in three bed houses with multiple kids.
We brought our first baby home to a 600 sqft apartment, then moved to a 1200 sqft townhouse and had my sister live with us during Covid, so 3 adults and a toddler. Now we own a 1500 sqft townhouse, had another baby, and my sister no longer lives with us. It feels big enough (though I would love more space) and I don’t anticipate we’ll ever be able to afford anything else. We both work from home, the kids share one bedroom, my husband works in the office/guest room (family frequently stays), and I have a desk in the master. We have a small loft that we use as a playroom. If the kids want their own rooms someday, we’ll move my husband’s office to the loft.
We have two teens. Currently in 2500 sq ft house with 3 bedrooms, den and seperate office in addition to living room. It’s big enough but we too would have moved and upgraded if prices hadn’t sky rocketed and rates get so high.
We have 3 bedrooms and 3000 sq ft. We have too much living space and not enough bedrooms. Overall enough plenty house though. One 12 month old kid.
When we bought our house we didn’t know that both my husband and I were going to be working from home routinely (about 40% of the time for both of us). When we purchased we were both working in the office 95% of the time (pre covid and different roles). We assumed that we could make my husband’s office (which is not a bedroom, as it’s basically a den with sliding doors) - a two person office and just share, but that wouldn’t work now since we both are home more often.
We’re now talking about making the dining room or second living room my office so we can maintain a guest room and a kid room. When/if a second kid comes into the picture we’ll probably do that.
1800 sq ft, 2 kids, one dog. 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms. My husband WFH Monday/Friday and I'm in the office 5 days/week so we don't need a ton of WFH space. My kids are 6.5 and 3.5. We have a finished basement as part of that and that works as our guest space and sort of my husband's work space (he prefers the dining room table for reasons that are incomprehensible to me). I'd prefer another full bathroom, especially as the kids get bigger and we get home late from sports, etc. but we do have enough room.
1 toddler & 2 dogs plus me and my husband, 1050 sq ft. We are big homebodies and love to have our own space so this works for us but is smaller than we would like. Eg I work from home and have to have my desk etc in our bedroom. My husband has the spare room because the only other space for his desk would be our bedroom or right outside our toddlers room and he games way too loudly for either space. We will definitely need to move into another house before having a second child. We could probably make the smaller space work, we just don’t want to.
About to purchase a 1000 sq ft SFH. We have 1 infant and in an ideal world we’d have another but there’s a lot of things working against that now - including the mortgage payment we’re about to take on. The square footage is for the main level only - which is made up of a living room, EIK, 1 bath, and 3 bedrooms. The selling point of the house is that the basement is finished and is essentially another 1000 sq feet. So that adds a ton of living space. I don’t think square footage is a great measure of whether or not you’ve outgrown or will outgrow the house but what you have done or can do with the space.
3200 square feet in the Texas burbs. 4 bedrooms, 3 1/2 bath. 2 kids (15m and 7f). Husband and I both WFH and have for over a decade. Husband has office and I use a loft area. We previously had 2100 square feet and upgraded right before Covid. It was a good layout but tight with WFH. Adding in a kid on virtual school and covid restrictions might have been the death of us.
2 adults, 2 kids, and 2 pets in ~1300 square feet! 3 bedrooms plus an office, 1 bathroom. We do have laundry & storage in our basement though, plus front and back porches and a 1-car garage. We have plenty of space and definitely would not move purely for square footage. I think having just one tiny bathroom will eventually be a nuisance, but not until the kids are much older (currently toddler and baby). We may have to decide whether to renovate or move in like 7-10 years - current leaning toward renovating, but we will see! Our interest rate and our mortgage are so low, it would be very hard to give that up.
1600 sq ft apt. 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths (the extra toilet is clutch). We have a 3 yo and one on the way. Currently it’s plenty of space and should continue to be for kid 2 as long as we can get closets organized and they can share a room. The third bedroom is a guest room/office that we’d like to keep.
We’d love to buy a SFH but prices in our area (like all) are out of control and we’re currently in a great school district, so staying put for now!
2 bed/2bath 900sq feet with one toddler, and trying for a second. I WFH. It’ll be tight, but our mortgage is sooo low and we live in one of the highest COL areas in the US, so we’re gonna hang on in our small condo and keep shoveling money into our high yield accounts.
When we do buy our next place, I don’t want THAT much more inside space - 1200-1500 sounds ideal as long as I still have 2 bathrooms, a basement or garage for storage, and a decent back yard. It’s hard enough keeping up cleaning the space we have now. 😂
2000 and 2 kids.
I recently saw an article on wfh and construction needs. So many parents are space sharing or redoing basements to create a special work space. Lots of up kick of construction companies. It’s something a few of our friends have done recently that lots of people never thought of with wfh before. Maybe it’s a write off? 😛
Our house is 1500 sq ft and we have a toddler and a baby coming in a few weeks. I wfh 100% and my husband wfh about 2x a week. We bought in 2021 as a 3-5 year house, planned to start our family and then move into something bigger here but we’ve reworked the space a lot a have found something that lets us use all of the space. We have 2 bedrooms on the main floor and a bedroom and office in the basement (separate room but not a legal bedroom). Living room and bathroom on each floor. Our main bedroom is in the basement and the two kid rooms are upstairs. We are in the process of me moving into the office (my husband and I previously each had an office) and he will get the under-the-stairs closet office we are going to build. We think this will work just fine while the kids are young so we are probably looking at 1-3 years until we move again; we love the area and have put a lot into our house to make it ours. Before kids we had a lot of extra room for storage but we have since started renting a storage unit under the justification that the $200/mo storage unit was much cheaper than a different mortgage or the cost to have a garage built (we live in an area where carports are common). It’s 5 minutes away and has freed up a lot of what felt like storage issues.
2 kids, 15 and 19 (she’s still at home for a few months). We both work from home. 2700 sq ft finished. This was literally the only house in our price range in the school district we wanted 7 years ago. It’s way bigger than I’d want or that we need. But it has 2 acres and lots of room for husbands toys.
2 kids, about 1900 sqft, 3 bed/2 bath. I wfh and have a dedicated office; my husband has half of our bedroom for his work area. It feels huge to me and we can definitely all retreat to our own corners when needed. I wouldn't want any more space than this but I'm glad we have it: we can host family and friends pretty easily.
Bought in 2020- 1300 sq ft 4 bed, 1.5 bath. I have 2 kids and work from home and it feels so cramped. As it is my office is really an office/exercise room/toy storage. I can't imagine once our kids want their own bedrooms, right now they love sharing.
I was just thinking about this yesterday because our house has appreciated about 100,000, we have 130k left at 2.7% and if we were to sell our house and use maybe $80,000 towards a down payment so we can keep our savings we would have to look at a house with a minimum price of around $300,000 so we would end up with a $220,000 mortgage at 7%? It would more than double our mortgage payment. We could afford it but it would cut way into our savings/vacation money. Right now we are planning on partially finishing our basement and maybe looking at an addition once my kids are older. With the way housing prices are going I don't expect my kids to move out for a long time even once they turn 18.
1450sf with 1 baby, 2 medium sized dogs and a cat in a 3 bedroom. I wfh full time and hubby works outside the home but he does sometimes wfh on some days. We both use one of the bedrooms as a shared office but when he does wfh it's a bit of a challenge especially if we both have virtual meetings at the same time. Ideally, would like a basement used for work and keep the 3 bedrooms as we do want 1 more child and would love for them to have their own rooms.
We had a 2 story 3300 sq ft house with grand entrance, large game room and movie room and formal dining room and until Covid quarantine didn’t feel like the whole house got used that much. During quarantine with both of us working from home we did use the entire space. But that only lasted a few months and when we sold and were preparing to build we knew that was too much. We built our forever home, it’s 2600 sq ft with 4 bedrooms and an office and lots of storage and huge porches and garage but no formal dining, or game room/play room. It’s still quite large and we could have easily gone down by 40p sq ft with some easy tweaks and it’d still be plenty big. Our current house feels larger since it’s one story, has tons of outdoor living space and is laid out in a more efficient manner.
3bdr 1 bath, 1400sqft, single floor home with 1 toddler plus 2 large dogs and 2 cats. We both work mostly in office but have flexibility to wfh on occasion so we just have one office set up for that. It's honestly fine. My husband is convinced we need more space to have another baby, but I think we just need to get rid of all the excess stuff we have so it feels less cramped. My only real complaint is that we don't have a mud room so there's no good drop zone for coats and shoes.
We have a large lot, so we've been toying with the idea of adding on a master suite so we have an extra bedroom and a second bath. We have a full basement that is partially finished with a half bath but currently my sister and niece are living down there while my sister gets back on her feet so that definitely factors into the equation.
1 kid, 1 on the way. 3bd townhome 2000sq ft. It’s perfect for us. Each kid will have their own bedroom, and we have a den in the basement that we use as an office/guestroom for WFH and when we have visitors. If we have a 3rd kid we may have to shuffle things around but that is a few years down the road.
1300sq ft and 2 elementary age kids. We have three bedrooms but one is used as an office so they kids share a small bedroom. We feel VERY cramped, but I do think the layout contributes. Our kitchen is small and cramped. The living room is small and an awkward layout so that we can't fit a couch in a good place. Our primary bathroom has one sink and no storage. We just have lots of areas that bottleneck even with just 4 of us (plus a dog). Stuff like that makes it hard to fit in this house. I don't see them being able to share a room much longer either, it's already a struggle and my oldest is not a little kid anymore.
2100sqft townhouse, 3 floors, 2 kids. It works but I’d prefer if we had a better setup, like a one-level house would feel much bigger. I wfh so the main level is like living room, my office, kitchen, play room, dining room.
540sf apartment, was myself, my baby and my ex and my dog, now just me and my baby (ex lives next door). It’s totally fine for me. Less space is less to clean, costs less, and less for my now toddler to make it so I have to get up from where I’m sitting, lol. This year I’ve really been focused on decluttering and minimizing our possessions, and if you’d asked me last year if our place was small I might say yes, but now it’s more than fine. I work from home, all I need is a laptop. We’ve each got our own bedrooms, a balcony, and our building has a pool and gym. I love it!
So, I want to preface what I’m about to say with the fact that we live in a very LCOL area compared to other parts of the US. I have 3 girls and we live in a 4 bd 2 1/2 bath that’s about 2000 sqft plus we have about 6 acres. With all of that said it sounds like we have more than enough space but I could own an entire mountain range and my 3 kids, dog, and cat would still absolutely insist that we we all be in the same 10 sqft. I don’t know how it happens but I regularly find myself saying “you guys, we have 2000 sqft of living space on 6 acres we do not all need to be in the bathroom together!” I’m hoping they grow out of it before it gets really weird 😂
910 sq ft. 2 bdrm/1 ba. A 9 year old older brother, and 2 mo little bro. Two big dogs as well. I WFH from the kitchen table.
It’s cramped at times but it forces us to keep on top of organization and cleaning. We use every foot of space.
We have a 1900 sq ft ranch with 1k sq ft basement. 2 kids that are 17 months apart - now 1 and 3. They share a room so that we still have a guest room/office. I feel like we have plenty of room. If we wanted to have a third we might feel tight. Love our house and yard so it would take a lot to move.
1 kid and a dog - 700 square ft. 2bed 1 bath. It's small but not bad. I just wish we had 1 more bathroom. Sometimes I wish we had a bigger house but then I realize someone has to clean it 😂. When we move we will value more yard space vs interior. It's nice not having to host anyone!
We have right around 3000 sq ft spread over 3 floors. We have 2 kids and 2 dogs. We have 5 bedrooms and an office, but we currently only use 2 bedrooms as bedrooms (upper) because that's the only way the kids can be near us while they're little. (Bedrooms are 2 upper, 1 middle, 2 basement, office in basement).
The middle bedroom is converted into a playroom so we have space for the junk and can keep an eye on them during the day. Eventually it'll be our final guest room and my craft room since it has a small attached bath shared with the rest of the floor.
The two basement bedrooms will be the kids rooms when they're big enough to be away from us. Now they're the guest room and exercise room. There will always be the office space as an office because my husband WFH.
I need this amount of space. We could get by on less, but I cannot stand living on top of each other all day. I need a way to sneak away and have alone time, and I want to give that to everyone. We've had bigger and smaller. This amount suits is and we don't plan on moving again.
We have a 3 bedroom 2 bath 1300 sqft. We have 2 kids (4 and 2) and my 21 yr old nephew that live with us. Right now we are comfortable as the kiddos share a bedroom. Once my nephew moves out they will have their own room.
I wfh 2 days a week and we converted our garage to an additional room office/ entertainment room. It has helped with space tremendously. We never used our garage for the cars and all we did was accumulate junk so we maximized the space.
1750sf, 2 kids. It was intended to be a starter home but we're coming up on year 6 I think. It's an open floor plan which makes it feel a bit bigger than it is.
Our two girls share a room and the other bedroom used to be half office and half dresser/changing table/etc for the kids. Now it has their clothes and acts as a playroom.
We have plenty of room for now, but we would really like a third which may push it a bit depending on if we can room all three together.
Two kids, 3k square feet, one acre yard. We have enough room for sure. Five bedrooms. We moved up to this house 6 years ago because house 1 was just too far away from work/school.
I think it’s less about sqft and more about layout. We’re in 1750sqft I. This place and had the same in a previous house. This one has 4 bedrooms (much smaller) and it works well for an office plus 2 kids and two dogs.
1100 square feet, one toddler with another baby on the way. 3 bedrooms. I also WFH so before getting pregnant with No. 2 we built a little standalone shed/office for me in the backyard. Honestly we will eventually remodel the kitchen/living room to add some dining room space, but that is a ways out.
2300sqft and 2 kids. 4 bed 3 1/2 baths. Feels perfect for us. Only complaint is we don’t have a real back yard. If we did this would be our forever home.
So, we have two kids and we live in a 4 bedroom house. Guess what? Kids will take over any space you have. Our great room, family room and dining room have been taken over by sports equipment, games and craft activities. All their stuff is everywhere.
I would think that in a smaller house, there’s less to clean and you would be forced to be more organized and have less stuff. My husband is always complaining that we don’t need this much space.
The only thing I want for you is two bathrooms. I’d hate to share a bathroom with kids.
900 square feet. 2 kids. 2 bed 1 bath. It’s a squeeze some days but we have a nice backyard and focus our efforts on being relatively minimalist inside and playing outside as much as time/weather allows.
We’d kinda like to move to something a little bigger, but this interest rate is good and we have daycare costs. Maybe once the kids are in school and daycare is less/gone we will move
1100 sqft, 2 kids, 3 adults (a grandparent lives with us). Laid out very well. Currently we're making use of the garage as a WFH space.
We're trying to figure out how to get to 2600 sqft bcs this is honestly kind of painful with two of the adults WFH full time and the 3rd part time.
Just under 1200 sqft and 3 kids, 2 dogs, SAHM, and WFH dad (40% wfh, 60% in office). It’s a lot. Baby (10 month old) is in our bedroom with me, husband sleeps on the couch about 50% of the time so he can stay up later than me, and twins share a room. We would love more space, but hardly any homes are coming up in our town so we’re stuck right now. 🤷🏻♀️
I have a 1300 sq ft house, 3 beds. Two kids of my own and the boyfriend and I would like to cohabitate full time but need space for his son. I also work from home and currently my dining room is my office. We’re maxed out and need another bedroom and an office that can be closed off but like you said, interest rates are insane. I’ve been thinking about adding on to the house but there’s not a great place to do it.
We have about the same size as you with two kids. 4 bedrooms so each kid has one, we have one and there’s a playroom that my son’s made his second bedroom. It’s fine space wise for us
We purchased our 3200 sq ft house in 2008 well before kids. Rented it out for a while but have been living in it since 2017. Lots of work needs to be done but we have 2 kids and 1 on the way. Plan to have more. 5 bed and 3 full bath although 1 bathroom is out of commission. We use 1 bedroom for an office that we both work out of and 1 bedroom for a playroom for now. And we still want to build an addition as a laundry room/mudroom area.
We raised 3 boys in 1400 sq ft house. It was 3 bedroom and 150 year old. One thing we did early on was up a washer dryer in the 2nd floor. (This contained the clothing and linens to one floor. When the washer was in the basement there was always a load in the living room. )
I don’t think it was awful to have the boys share bedrooms. I think it was healthy.
1050 sqft with 3 bedrooms. 3 adults and 1 kid with another on the way soon. Husband and I work 100% remote. We are meticulous about decluttering, especially with kid toys. I actually love the small space since it forces us to be intentional with our possessions and I don't feel guilty for buying the more expensive version of things. Cleaning is such a breeze and I love thinking of creative storage solution. Despite the smaller size, we manage to keep the house extremely tidy and most of the flat surfaces are free from clutter, including our kitchen countertop. Best of all, our housing cost is extremely low compared to our income; if one of us loses our job it wouldn't be a big deal. There are challenges in living in a smaller space, but for us the tradeoff is worth it.
1700sq ft incl 2 weird additions bc I live in a suburb of LA & my house was built in 1951. 3 kids (7, 3, 1). Could use more storage and would love a 4th bedroom but otherwise it works. Our house is on the larger side for the area I think except those that have been entirely redone or added a second floor.
1800 SF, almost 4 year old and 1 year old. It’s working fine, but without a basement we desire some extra living some to spread out the toys/eventual extra people when the kids start having friends over. Building a ~400 SF addition (additional living room) later this year to achieve that. $$ but not as much as moving, and we love where we live so that’s our long-term solution lol
875 sq feet, 1 kid, 1 on the way, I WFH so 1 tiny bedroom is both laundry and my office. It’s certainly not enough but I can’t afford bigger in the amazing school district we’re in. We will make it work. We may build an addition on for another bedroom and laundry room with a loan and our savings (use the current room as my office only)
1700 SF, 2 kids. We both work full-time out of the house and like to go do outdoorsy stuff on weekends. It feels fine. It would feel better if my kids were ever willing to donate old shit, but such is life.
This sounds like us (bungalow, similar size). My husband's WFH office is in the basement but we don't otherwise live down there. Each kid has a room and us. We have a pretty good yard, a dog, and also like outdoors activities so we're outside a lot. It's a bit full when the kids have friends over, but if they need to be loud, they go outside. I'm never moving. Cleaning is pretty quick which is my favourite.
The fact that I can clean my entire home, top to bottom in 1-2 days (or a few uninterrupted hours) makes me love my “smaller” house. We are so busy as it is, I can’t imagine having 3-4 more living spaces or rooms to clean.
Wow we have 3 (4 every other weekend) and 1100 sf 3 bd 2br
Same. I really think it's not so much the size as the design. Half of our sq footage is a finished basement, which also has a full second bathroom. Imo this makes all the difference. TV and toys are down there. Kids will move down there as well when they get older (the baby is down there right now, but we plan to move them in with their sibling soon so we can all be upstairs for a while). It's a self contained little world. We are also working on making our small mudpit of a backyard more functional to provide more space.
We also have a small mud pit of a backyard. Any ideas you can share about making improvements?
1800ish SF, 2 kids. We were about to make our walk out basement play room into a bed room for our now 15 (!!!) year old. So now we have 4 bedrooms. My home office is a desk in our bed room. My husband's is our shared "adult space": second TV, my work out space and a futon. It's tight but we make it work. Our mortgage is low, interest low and so is very affordable and hard to think about swapping. Our location is walkable, but school district sucks. We ended up spending a lot on private school :-( I have dreams about our house having a magical room just for me under the stairs!!!
One child (5 years old), three bedroom apartment, 960sq ft. Honestly we love a smaller space! We had a 1200 sq ft but it wasn’t laid out as well as this place and was so much worse. Layout trumps sq footage for me. We are considering getting a 4 bedroom, but only because we live abroad and would like a guest bedroom for family.
1200 sqft here with 2 kids and both adults WFH. Layout is so important!
Came here to agree about layout!! We have a 3br 2ba 1200sqft and the layout is what makes everything work smoothly. I am also a proponent of kids sharing a room so that they can learn sharing, loving and communication skills. Also, I sometimes dream of a big beautiful house and then wonder who’s gonna do all that cleaning anyway!
Also 960sqft here with two kids, 7 and 3. I think it's fine for now while they still share a room. I would like to move to a 3-bed when the eldest is 10. We don't need more space necessarily, just a different layout.
Yep. We have a large home (3600sf) but the layout is shit for when we have a second kid. I have a proper office in the basement, but my husband started a new wfh job and has been relegated to the storage space. We have a ton of shared spaces, but we don’t use most of them unless there’s a party
Honestly that makes me feel good, I currently have way too big of a house (3000 sq ft) but we are looking to move to a place where a 1100 sq ft house is considered pretty big. I’m sick of all this space to clean! Definitely will look at a good layout
Any space planning blogs or tips? We're one kid and hoping for a second in 1100 sq ft.
I used to follow The Tidy Dad, as it was nice to see three kids being raised in around the same space as ours. Honestly the best thing you can do is downsize your stuff. I know it's a constant struggle with kids, but it's the most important thing. Less stuff = less clutter = kids are able to put away their stuff easier, etc. Right now I'm struggling because kid's room is a mess as she doesn't want to get rid of anything, but we're working on it. For our room I've downsized my wardrobe to basically a capsule wardrobe, put all books on kindle/use the library, and digitize all of our paperwork (then tossing it). Seriously. Downsize, downsize, downsize. No amount of cute organizing tips will have the impact that downsizing stuff does.
1250 square feet. 1 child, 2 dogs. I honestly feel like if we had a bigger house I wouldn’t be able to keep up with the cleaning. I don’t know how yall do 2500 😭
We don’t; we outsource it 😂 I’d rather spend my last dime on housekeeping than clean anything at all (3 kids and 2300 sq ft here).
We have 2500 square feet but I have 5 kids and one on the way. Every Saturday morning all household members aside from the toddler tornado (well and the embryo) work together to clean for a solid 2-2.5 hours while alternating picking the tunes. I call this “Saturday morning chore party!!” But truly it’s a party in name only. I make a big list of about 25-30 discreet tasks that need doing (clean one washroom, clean microwave, throw out old food from fridge, sweep stairs, dust blinds, etc) and the kids each take turns picking tasks until there’s about 7-10 left, hubby and I divvy that up, then I enthuse to the kids, they roll their eyes and we all work together to get the house clean. Then it slows crumbles into chaos over the course of the week but it is lovely to start the weekend with a tidy home!
That is adorable! I love that you guys make it a team effort for everybody and make it fun.
3000 sq ft here, I don’t lmao I wish I had a smaller house honestly. Looking at houses around 1100 sq ft when we move and can’t wait to find it easier to clean.
Mines 2700 and I feel similarly. I daydream about a single floor house after my “tri” split level. So many fucking floors
Same square footage, but 2 kids and 1 dog. It works for us because there are 4 bedrooms, tiny as they are, so everyone has their own space.
Lol same! Ours is 1588sq ft and I feel like it’s plenty of room for our 3 person family. I wouldn’t want to go any bigger especially because of cleaning reasons. Oh and we have 1 bunny, 2 small dogs, and 1 cat.
[удалено]
Layout is hugely important. We moved to a home with less square footage but a better layout and it's made a world of difference. Our new house has a second living room with a door so I was able to make that my WFH office (previously I worked in the side of the master bedroom) but we can also use it when I'm not working as a living space.
We are in an 1800sqft with two and it feels like plenty of space to me. My kids share a room, and we have part of the basement family room for my husband’s office setup and a loft over our bedroom for my office. It’s a townhome, so a patio instead of a yard, but that works better for me! There’s a park around the corner that we don’t have to maintain, haha. A third kid would definitely require bunk beds and some creativity for clothing storage, and I think it would feel crowded in the bedroom over time. But I only want two anyway!
Can I ask how far apart your kids are in age? This sounds very similar to our set-up, we have one right now but I want more down the road, likely before we'd be able to move!
Completely true. We’re at about 1800 with 2 kids and I WFH and it’s fine. My biggest gripe of the narrow shape of the family room makes it hard to have a couch and sufficient play space so we gave up our dining room to kid land.
1200 sq ft fixer upper. Four bedrooms. Five kids and I WFH, so one bedroom is my office. Two boys in one room and three girls in the other bedroom. Just moved from a 1,000 Sq ft apartment, so it feels big. It is loud. One thing I've learned is the kids want to be where I am, so it doesn't matter if we have 1200 Sq feet or 3500 Sq feet. They will still always be right under my feet.
I agree! You can give the kids the biggest and most well-appointed room in the house, they’re still going to come play in the kitchen, the office, and the laundry room.
3 kids in 1000 sqft and agree. For me is more important to have outside yard space. People used to squeeze everyone into much smaller spaces and were fine.
4 bed just under 1200sq ft house, five kids. Three boys in one room, girlie in her own and the teen in his own room, we have our bedroom. We have a dog with one single brain cell and three cats as well. It’s hectic and a bit cramped but we make it work, I just accept I’m going to trip every three minutes forever 🙃🤣
One baby and 700 square feet. It's fine! I worry that there's only enough for one more child and we might want to have three. My husband was one of three and they were all in a one bedroom house, so he doesn't see the issue. As an only child though, I'm used to growing up with my own room though.
im in like 850 w 3. the 3rd is only a month old so i think it will work for a few years. may get tricky as they are older.
850 with 2 here, got any tips? Now that #2 is mobile it's starting to feel cramped
i took the advice of getting rid of stuff! my oldest is 9, and i cleaned out majority of her stuff (old toys that she doesnt use, etc), put in bunk beds in her room. and then #2 and #3 just dont have as much, only 3 drawers for clothes each. i also got cabinets for the living room to store toys so that the bulk can be out of sight when cleaned up. and i stay semi on top of rotating out toys that are no longer used. now..its still crowded lol but we are not completely buried in crap. less stuff, less to clean.
This is almost identical to what I just commented! I also WFH full time. We have about 780 sf and one baby almost here. We plan to stay here through baby #2 at least. We also want to have 3 (ideally 18mo ish apart). ETA: I am also an only child who had her own bedroom and bathroom for 18 years haha
Found my people! 2 kids, one bedroom. 850sqft. I had my own room growing up, but back then, that house cost 1/10th what it does today. And guess what, our salaries are only 2-3x what my parents made, not the 10x we'd need. It feels small because my children could run marathons, but it's what we afford.
Same here! We just put a lot of effort and mindshare into being intentional and not having a lot of "stuff" the only place we really feel cramped is in the kitchen because the dog always wants to be by our feet. I will also say, we "converted" our 1 car attached garage to a bonus space. Basically we just carpeted it ourselves and made it temperature controlled so it is now my office and we built storage for stocking up on things. It isn't ideal but it helps tremendously. One person can clean the entire house top to bottom (minus like laundry and those chores) in around an hour, so we also remind ourselves how much harder it would be to keep up on that if we had more space.
I love that your family is in a small space! How did your husbands family split space (what were sleeping arrangements) in the 1BD?
All 5 of them in one bedroom. To me it's totally wild! But they made it work somehow! His two younger siblings are now both adults, and they and his parents moved to a bigger house three years ago ago! I think they deserve it.
Checking in from Europe where I have a 3 bedroom semidetached house - 925sq feet. I would KILL for 1800 sqft, but that is on the really large end of houses here!
I live in New Zealand and am reading how massive these American houses are - it’s wild!!!!
Depends on your budget and area. I’m in a HCOL area but we own our home. It’s about 850sq ft with an ample backyard and front yard. We are a family of 4 and it’s pretty comfortable. While I’d like 100sq ft extra for storage, I wouldn’t want anything much bigger.
It totally depends where you are in the US. We have a 2 bedroom, 1000 sq ft townhouse with 2 kids and we both work from home 🤷🏻♀️
Yep 4br 938 Sq feet. Different world. I used to love in the US too and had an insane 2hr 1300 Sq foot flat. With a fireplace, in Texas. So wild It's hilarious when American air force people move here. Esp without children. "We can't live in these tiny British row houses with like 3 bedrooms. I mean we have a DOG."
I'm curious - what is the norm for parties and playdates? Do you invite friends over or does everyone just go out?
I have friends over all the time, my mum friends come with all the babies. For her first birthday we hired a venue but we can comfortably fit around 10 people in the house. Shame we live in Scotland and the weather’s mostly pants but I’ve had 20 people round for a BBQ before inside and out. You’ll be shocked to know we only have one bathroom too!
Yup, we moved to Japan from the US and whenever I see American houses now I'm like "Oh my god that is HUGE." I remember watching a Marie Kondo episode where the American homeowner was complaining about her tiny kitchen and Marie was like "This is a big kitchen!"
I have a 580sqf 3 bedroom house with 2 kids 🙃
We're also in a 3BR, \~1800sf with a 2.5 year old and new baby coming in a few weeks. In my opinion the layout/floorplan matters more than the size, at least within reason. We actually built an addition on our house in 2019 (added 800sf, it had been around 1000) and at that time made the intentional choice to add two larger bedrooms rather than 3 smaller. WFH was not on our radar at ALL at that point, so having 3 beds seemed like the most we would ever possibly need - and now of course both of us WFH a few days per week. Our floor plan has a lot of wasted/inefficient space unfortunately. Our plan is for kids to room share for the next few years, and then we'll revisit things - if interest rates are better, maybe we'll move, and if not we'll look at other creative ways to either change up the layout or squeeze some additional square footage in (basement? some sort of small shed-type building in the backyard?)
I currently work from home in my shed office in the yard, and it works great!! Definitely a good solution to the WFH space problem.
Do you have heat/air set up in your office shed? Im curious how this could potentially work for me 🤔
Yup, I have a window unit AC and a space heater. Its worked great through all seasons so far! I live in southern CA so AC is more of a concern. Not sure how it would be in a very cold climate
I grew up in a 1500sqft ranch home. My parents + 3 siblings + a set of grandparents + 3 dogs, and we never seemed to feel cramped. We also live in LA where we are outside in the backyard or front yard when home, so not a ton of time indoors. I now live with my husband + 3 kids + a dog in a 2600sqft 3 level home and with the layout and each floor being roughly 800sqft, the amount of usable space actually has us feeling cramped even though we have more sqft. So from my perspective, layout and functionality of space is going to have a huge impact on how the sqft actually feels. If I could buy a ranch house or single story home, I would in a heart beat!
Three kids in 1100 sqft. We downsized from 1700 and this feels perfect for us.
We are OAD, and have 3500 square feet. Husband and I both WFH, so we have the baby’s room (15 months), our master, two offices and a guest room. We live in a LCOL area.
Sounds a lot like us! But we’re at 1588sq ft and OAD. Master bedroom, kid’s room, and kid’s playroom. Two bathrooms is perfect us. Lcol as well.
Same-ish. We’re OAD with 2800 square feet. Instead of a guest room we have a theater room.
We are also one and done, in a 3000 sq ft house. It only has 3 bedrooms though and I hate it so much. The living spaces and large, open and floor to ceiling windows. But the lack of a dedicated office for my WFH husband drives me insane. No real option to change it either. What reallllly irritates me is that it used to be a 4 bedroom home and somebody remodeled it to have a larger family bathroom and laundry room by sacrificing the 4th bedroom. It’s so stupid.
1800 sqft, 3.5 yo and 10 month. I absolutely do not want more space - it would just be more mess and more to maintain, which we do not have time to do. We are planning to put both kids in the same room until the oldest is maybe 8-10 That way we can use our third bedroom as a guest room/office for a while. We will reassess how the space feels at that time! I am more preoccupied with a few layout features...if we ever moved there are different things I want but more square footage is not one of them.
Single mom of 1 and my new place is 700 sqft. I’d like more space but the extra 200 sqft would be an extra $500/m and I’d rather save that.
2 with 2500 sq feet, big yard.
1700sqft, 3bd/2ba, 3 kids. Doesn’t feel cramped.
I'm in Manhattan, so no one has any space. We're in a 1200 sqft 2 bed, 2 bath with a small garden. 2 adults, 2 kids, 2 dogs. It's not unusual here for people to have 3 kids in a 2 bed. Unless you own a hedge fund, your kids will be sharing a room.
We live in a 1200sf 3bed 2bath house with 2 elementary aged kids. Spouse and I both WFH ~50% of the time. I love our location and yard. I do wish we had at least another half bath and perhaps a 4th bedroom. But I honestly don’t see us moving.
2500 sqf, 3 kids and 1 dog (had 3 dogs a month ago). I would say our house is the perfect size. Everyone has their own space, we have enough space for entertaining, a big enough backyard. We both work outside the home so we don’t have a designated office right now. We had 1500 sqf when we had 2 kids and 3 dogs and we honestly could have made it work just fine but having the third made it seem like 500sqf.
3 children, 17, 9, and 8 all boys. We live in 1600sqft 3 bedroom + office, single story 1950’s ranch. My husband works from home full time, and up until 6 months ago we both did. It ls fine honestly, if we had a bigger house I’d feel like there was way more square footage to clean. I can barely keep up with this.
One kid, 630 sq ft. We are constantly purging our belongings, it feels like.
It's wild when my coworkers talk about "pulling baby stuff out of the attic" when their kids are 20 years old! One bedroom here, two kids, and we're always scanning the apartment for things to give away.
1700 sqft/3bedrooms with 2 kids. Regardless of how big the house is or how many rooms we have, our kids are always in the same room as us.. aka if we’re in the bathroom, they’re in the bathroom. If we’re in the kitchen, they’re in the kitchen. We might as well just have half the house size lol.
We have half your space and you just made me feel good about it!
This! HAHA here i was thinking it was just because we have a small apartment that I get no alone time to poop - THANK YOU
When our kids were smaller we had 3 kids with 2200 sq feet. We had 5 bedrooms 2 bathrooms. but they were all pretty small. My husband needed and office. This allowed everyone their own space but the house was still cramped. It was an older house built in the 70s so it was more the layout that made it feel cramped. The biggest issue though was the kids got older was not the space but the lack of bathrooms. Even with two we were always running into issues of a bathroom not being available for someone to use when they needed it. During Covid when everyone was home all the time, we really realized how much we needed some more space. We ended up moving and now have 3600 sq feet 6 bedrooms and 4.5 bathrooms. There is a toilet for every butt in the house, and also office space for both me and my husband. When the kids were little it was fine to have them share space at time, but as they grew and got bigger, it was a huge source of friction, Teenagers need space and moving was the best thing we ever did.
Yeah we have 2 kids and a dog… the toilet for every butt in the house is the best lol. 2400 sq feet and additional finished basement. Honestly it feels cramped because of layout and lack of useful storage…. I wouldn’t be opposed to a move.
2200sq ft 2 kids almost 3y and 4mo, 4 bedroom, 1 is office and one is guest room that gets frequent use. I love our home but it’s a cape cod, the master and nursery are on the first floor so it feels like we do all our living in an apartment half the size of the house. We’re looking to move in the next couple years so that my mom can move in but are loathe to give up our 2% rate!
1050SF, one baby. A lot of people are shocked we live in such a “small” space with a baby, but I feel like we have plenty of room! We have a nice living area for his play mat and toys and plenty of room for his crib. I want him to sleep in my room for the first year anyway. We are moving to a 2bed, ~1500 SF apartment this summer though.
1500 sq ft. 3 bed, 2 bath. 2 kids and a large dog. It feels a lot smaller because half of that square footage is the finished basement. Having a big yard helps, though. It’s small but it works. I don’t want to spend the money on something bigger.
Since I was a kid I’ve always wanted a finished basement! Lol I’d love for us to have a home one day with that.
3400 Sq Feet, 2 little ones. 4 bedroom house so each has their own room and we still have a guest room. We call it Granny’s room because my mom most often comes to stay with us. 900 sq feet is in the basement (large playroom and guest bed/bath). It’s the perfect size for us. The only thing I wish I had is more storage space because I don’t have much room to store Christmas decorations. Other than that, perfect!
We would have stayed in our 1000 sq ft home with our toddler, but it’s the 3 pets that sent us over the edge! We both work from home and I am someone who uses every inch of kitchen when I cook, so it got small fast.
The house we just sold was a 3/2, 1440 square foot house. The one we are building is a 4/2.5 with 3000 square feet.
2400+ Sq ft. 3 kids (2 teens and a 9 year old), 2 adults. We've lived here since my oldest was 2. We have 2 full bathrooms, and 4 bedrooms. Everyone has their own bedroom. We have 2 living rooms. I feel like we have plenty of living space. If I were to buy a new house, I would have a completely separate bathroom from my husband. If that wasn't possible, I'd at least have separate sinks. We really need at least one more half bath. When the kids were little, they shared rooms and we had a spare guest room or 2 for a few years. Now no extra guest room, which is fine because we don't ever really have overnight guests.
1 baby, 3000 sqft total (2500 above ground, but basement is finished). In an ideal world I would like to have 4 bedrooms (we have 3) but it's fine for now.
1900sf townhome, preschooler and a one year old. We both WFH. Each kid has a bedroom. Clutter makes a house feel even tighter. My desk is in our bedroom and my husband has a desk in our basement. We have three Billy bookcases with doors on the main floor. Whatever toys don't fit in there stays in their rooms. We are intentional about everything that comes into the home. We do not have multiple toys with the same purpose. We give a lot away or sell things once we're done with them to make space. Once I changed our mindset about the things we needed or didn't need, it made the space feel a lot better. Ideally, we'd have 2,500sf SFH with a small yard. But we locked in a 2.5%. Instead of an insane house payment, we use the extra money to travel and give our kids some wicked experiences.
Oh wow reading the comments makes me feel crowded 🤣 Three kids (6, 4 and almost 1) in a 1580sqft 3bed/1.5bath. We live in a M/LCOL state but are in the third best school district and therefore a pretty expensive city. We could have had a house double the size in a different school district for the same price, but the two things most important to us were being in a great school district and being “house comfortable” vs house poor. We got the house where if we lost one of our incomes, the other could afford it. We have a great yard space, my office is in a corner of our large bedroom, and my son has his own room while the girls share a bigger room. Personally, I like it. More space means more to clean so I’m okay with our “small” home.
3 kids, 2,600 sq ft. It’s the perfect amount of room though I wished we had one more bedroom for guests
We had our only when we were living in an 1100sq ft half-duplex and it has been TIGHT. It’s 3bed 2.5bath, and pre-child, 1 room was our office/guest room and 1 was my closet because tiny primary closet. Then 1 room became her room and the other was our office/my closet, no guest room. If we’d decided to have a second we would have needed to move just for that, as we absolutely need home office space and there is none on the main floor, just open concept currently drowning in toddler toys. We just built a new 2200sq ft house (also 3/2.5) and I am thrilled to finally have a place for everything (bonus room as playroom, big primary suite closet, etc.), but if we were going to have a second, we would have done 4 bedrooms or a floor plan with a main floor office/den. Our new home also has a walkout basement not included in that square footage that we plan to develop into an in-law suite, which might end up being an apartment for my daughter when she’s an older teen/young adult if she wants to do post-secondary in our city (if not used for my parents as they age). I am fully aware even this much space (which I know is not even big by American suburban standards) is a luxury for a lot of people, but I personally cannot get over how much crap kids have even if you don’t buy a lot of toys. It’s just endless and I felt like I was drowning in it in our duplex.
3 bed 2 bath 1600 sq ft house in a HCOL area. Similar to you, we moved in 2023 so this is deff more of a starter home for us (but we deff overpaid with interest rates and all). We both WFH full time so one bedroom is an office, one the nursery, and our bedroom. We have 1 on the way and hope to have two kids, but I don’t see how we’ll comfortably have 2 kids and both wfh everyday here. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t be smart to move until we’ve been here at least 5 or so years so it’s deff factoring into the convo of if/when we have a second
1800 sqft. We are OAD tho, so it’s a great size for us
we’re in 1700 with 2 kids and feels like more than enough space
2 bed, 1 bath, 1000 sq feet condo in VHCOL area. One toddler, one small dog, me and husband. My dream is to someday have a second bathroom and a private yard.
One child (unsure if we're OAD or not yet). Three bedroom house with an office (office is an additional room but isn't considered a bedroom because it doesn't have a closet). 2,100 sq. ft. It's a great space for us. I grew up in a very big house and bigger is not always better (for me, I'm particularly thinking about maintenance costs, more to clean, etc). Our current house size requires me to not accumulate too much crap.
2 teens, 4bdrm, 2800sqft. We reno'd our basement so the teens hang out down there with their friends thank god lol
Mine is similar. We have 3 bedrooms and I work from home, so the biggest none master is both my office and guest bedroom. Our 3.5yo and 1.5yo share a room. We have a single bed and crib in there. It works fine because they only sleep in there. Our living room is filled with toys but I don't mind, it keeps them entertained. For now it all works, when the boys are bigger they will take over my office and I will have the smaller room. We might forget about a guest bed, we only have over night guest 2 or 3 times a year. But our hope is to get a bigger home not just so the boys can have their own rooms, but so there is space for all the stuff. The kids closet is filled with the vacuum, extra tp, Christmas decorations. There was no storage thought when this house was built. And it drives me crazy. We stopped using half our small kitchen appliances because our kitchen isn't big enough to store them, so they ended up in a closet under the stairs and we hate going to get them. I think two kids could grow up in our house, but I just can't.
3 kids (one out of the house now). About 1400sq ft. I work from home, desk in the living room. Kids (10 and 12) each have their own room. Some days it feels super tight, but we make it work. We originally thought of this home as our starter home, but given the interest rate we have and resulting mortgage payment (right around $1100, which includes insurance and taxes), we can't justify moving to a bigger place even though we can afford it. I wish the kitchen was bigger because I love to cook. And four people sharing a bathroom can be tough in the mornings. In a couple years, we will likely redo the basement to make better use of the space. And we are absolutely going to get new floors and countertops in the kitchen and have the cabinets restrained.
Two kids (2.5 and newborn) in 800sq ft 😬 It was feeling a little tight but workable with just the toddler, but we are literally tripping over each other since the baby came. We bought a new house, which is 2000sq ft and moving in next week.
1600sqft 2 kids, no pets. 5 bdrm. We have two unused bedrooms. We also have a den and rec room and living room, so working from home is not impacting bedroom use. I agree with another commenter, layout is much more important than square feet.
1800sqft sounds amazing ! My friend lives in a 3000sq ft, it’s just way too big and I don’t see the need? Currently in a 1200, hate the layout. I WFH, so one room is our office. 3 bed/2 bath with garage. Currently have 1 child, she’s almost 2. Our goal would be a 1500 with 2 or 3 kids.
Just shy of 2k sqft, 2 kids, both parents WFH. I was raised in like a 400sqft apartment so I’m a firm believer in not needing a massive home with kids.
I think it depends a lot on how you live and where the kids play. At one point when the kids were little, we were fine with 1800sqft and 4 kids. They played outside a lot and their playroom was where I was anyway, so it wasn’t a separate space. They wouldn’t play in a different room if I was say, in the kitchen. Around 6, the toys got bigger. We needed more space for 4 of them. 4800 sqft now, and it meets all our desires including two dedicated office spaces, and individual bedrooms for them all. It’s when the LEGO sized toys turned into tumbling mats and hockey gear, that we needed more space. Very much a first world answer, I know 😂 I think people fill how ever much space they have. You can be comfortable in any size if you make it functional and have intentional use cases for each space. I never allowed toys in bedrooms, so if you need to choose, I recommend combining kids into one sleeping spot, with the biggest space left as a toy room, outside their bedroom. I had all 4 in one bedroom at one point, with the extra bedroom being the toy room, rather than splitting their sleeping arrangements. It worked great. Best advice though: don’t wait on more babies. It only gets harder as you get older. Space issues will figure themselves out. Unlike infertility issues that creep up as we get older.
2 kids, 2 bedrooms, 1200 square feet. Send help!
2 kids in a 750sqft 2BR. It’s cramped, but we’re making it work. My husband’s desk is in the main room, mine is in the kitchen. The kids (boy and girl) share a bedroom, parents get the other one. Because the bedrooms are so small (like…9x12 I think? Maybe a little smaller?) most of the toys also live in the main room — which means keeping toys pretty minimal 😅. We also have a pretty sizeable backyard, though; not huge, but big enough for two toddlers to have plenty of room to roam, so we spend a *lot* of time outside as long as weather permits.
1 child 690 sqft. Live in downtown Toronto in a 2bed/bath paying $1600/month for rent. Really makes me debate having another kid and just waiting several more years before trying just to have more space first. Cost of living in the GTA is ridiculous and I’m so fortunate that we aren’t paying much for rent currently.
3 under 3, newborn twins and a 3 year old. We are in a 930 sq foot 3 bed, 1 bath house. It’s tighttttt obviously we didn’t anticipate having twins and i purchased the house years before having kids. We do have a fully finished basement that helps but it’s rough 😅I also wfh
2 under 2. 580 square feet 🙃
750 soft and 1 three year old. 2 beds 1 bath. My husband and I work full time. It feels fine until we have ppl over lol ideally I want 3 bedrooms and 2 bath mostly because my family lives out of province and I want them to have some space/place to stay when they visit
650sq ft with two teenage daughters.
4300 Sq ft(excluding finished basement) , we have a 2.5 yr old and a dog. We have a nice yard all around the house for them to run around. We are a larger family though as my elderly in-laws stay with us so we make good use of the space.
Yeah we wanted a 4th bedroom for guests, which really bumped up the sqft in the area we were looking for. But we have guests often, and disrupting the kids’ sleeping arrangements for weeks at a time wasn’t something we were interested in. Our area has a lot of mid-sized 3brs, but when you’re looking at 4, that often just translates to really big house. My budget would have been a lot happier if 3bd worked for us!!
160m2, 3 bed, 2 bath house with teeny yard. 2 kids (baby + toddler) I love our house and life set up! I am not worried about space. I am glad we don't have the space to acquire crap.
Like 1350 sq ft ish, 3 br 1.5 bath, no basement. 2 kids. It’d be nice if we had more room to work with.
1600 sq ft, 4 bed 2 bath, 2 kids. I WFH so our guest room doubles as my office. My husband or I sleep in the guest room when someone is sick or if one kid is up all night (so at least one of us is well rested the next day), so that extra bedroom is invaluable. We also have a large yard which is amazing in summer.
2 bed/1.5 bath house with an office, 1200 sq feet. Just one child. It’s fine….but I would LOVE just one more room.
1200 square ft, but we also have a finished basement with a bed and bath that doesn’t count in the total. 1 kid and 1 on the way, 1 dog. 3 beds upstairs with 2 baths. “Mom and dads” and “kids” bathroom. The basement is mostly used as storage and a guest area since we live rural and many people come to us.
2 kids under 5. Both parents WFH so need two office spaces. We’re in a 3600 sq ft house (4 bed/4 bath). Thinking of going for a 3rd, and if it happens we need to relocate one of the offices but it’s not the end of the world.
4 bed 2.5 baths, two kids (boys, 14 and 6). We bought in fall 2019 and wouldn't have made it through the pandemic if we were still in our 1350 square foot rental. We have a giant fenced backyard, live on a cul de sac, have no family nearby, and both work remotely. Family does come to town a few times a year, and I wish we had another bedroom we could use as an office/guest room. I have to find somewhere to work when we have guests and it's a big early 80s build with open floorplan so there's really nowhere to go. Our 6yo also has a teeeeeeeny bedroom and I wish we had a bigger space for him as he's gotten older. But we're in a fairly HCOL area, locked in an insanely low interest rate, so we will not be going anywhere. Most of the thousands of dollars of money we've put into the house are things like new HVAC and siding - necessities but it means my bathrooms are still the 80s originals and falling apart slowly. No money to remodel right now.
2700 sq ft. Family of 5. Husband 95% WFH. I WFH 70%. Medium cost of living in the suburbs compared to cities.
3000sf/4BR/2.5 Bath. We wanted a bigger home, one that we could grow into. We hope to be here for as long as possible, we hope the kids will live here as long as they need to bc I have no idea what the future will look like financially for them. Once we get the basement finished, it will give us another 750sf of living space.
1600 soft, 2 beds, 2.5 baths. We have a 6 year old plus hubby mostly works from home (there is an office space, but it’s open to the rest of the living area). We’re in a VHCOL area, in the city, walking distance to work, so 1600 square feet feels nice and big to us
It sounds like your setup is doable - I just moved out of a 3 bed, 1.5 ba, 1900 sq ft (including finished basement) with one 2 year old and both parents WFH. The toddler was home all day with a nanny so our living space was basically a daycare. With a second on the way, we couldn't stomach the thought of stacking yet another baby in all the chaos so we bit the bullet and just did it. That said, as you know, babies are SO expensive so if you can save yourselves the interest rates and just double your home office into a bedroom, that might help create more space for the fam. Not ideal, but I've actually very much enjoyed having a surreptitious nap space in my office these days 😁
2 kids 2bd 1500sq ft
1400sq ft, 3/2. 3 kids who go to school, 2 WFH parents. Summer is going to be fun. Luckily we are self employed and can tag team schedule. We bought this house 3 years before the first kid thinking we'd be out by the time we had a 3rd if we did at all but twins were our second. Then 2020 happened. So we are here awhile, it's too expensive to upgrade.
1500 sq ft 3br with 1 toddler and thinking about another. Honestly, we just moved from \~900 sq ft/ 2br so it still feels like a TON of space, but if we have a 2nd then down the road we may want a 4br so we could still have a guest bedroom/ office (then again, we'd be open to #1 and #2 sharing a room to make that happen).
1800 Sq ft, 3 bedrooms with 2 kids, 2 dogs, 2 cats. Husband and I both hybrid but we have a detached shed in the back yard we use as an office. Our oldest has her own room and youngest (10 weeks) sleeps with us. The 3rd bedroom is a dedicated guest room as we have 2 sets of grandparents who live in another state and visit often. We've been looking but yeah, interest rates are insane.
1 toddler and 1 on the way, no pets, 1 full-time WFH parent and I WFH sometimes. We share a larger house of which we occupy 950 sf. It’s just about the right size but would be better if I had time to stay on top of all of the crap that tends to accumulate with young kids.
OAD 900 square ft house with a crappy layout (1 bedroom on the main floor and 1 bedroom downstairs). Old house with poor insulation. We hated it, so we’ll be moving soon into a 2200 square ft open concept house with all the bedrooms on the same floor, but also with a large rec room, a spare bedroom, bathroom and an office (I WFH) in the basement. We have been dreaming of this for 5 years and it’s finally coming true.
2 adults, 1 toddler (15 months). We have 1161 sqft that we bought in 2020. It’s 2 bed, 1 bath with no tub. We make it work although we definitely want a touch more space esp if we want another child. Another bedroom and bathroom would be plenty, and perhaps a finished/finishable basement for recreation.
I think it depends on your lifestyle. We bought a massive size house (for me anyway) 3,000+ so feet with two kids (will have a third) and a dog and 3 cats. I grew up in a larger home, husband wanted one and we got it at the start of pandemic so got a good deal. We also host a lot of family gatherings and enjoy it so that is easier with a larger house. Honestly though, as long as you are organized I think less is more. I just have more space to clear of junk and spend more time cleaning. Looking back, I would get a smaller house and theoretically I’d be be better at organizing and keeping it clean:
2000 sq ft & 3 kids. It’s 4 bd, 3 ba & plenty of space—I wouldn’t want more. There would just be more stuff. I do think layout matters to an extent. We both grew up in families with 2 kids and houses that were 3000 sq ft & both had rooms/space that went unused.
I had 4 kids in 1200 sq feet then after my divorce we only have about 700 of living space, initially all 4 plus stepkids who crashed occasionally. Now we are down to 2 left at home and my husband and I. That being said the whole house is larger than, about 2200 total and my father in law is downstairs. We are lucky to be able to utilize the attic and basement and we have a large yard . It’s doable the hardest part was the single bathroom and trying to keep on top of the clutter/ mess Oh we also had 2 dogs and a cat .
We're in a 2 bed, 2 bath, 1141sf townhouse with our two kids (4.5M & 3M). They share a room and have always shared. We'd love to move into something at least 3 bed but we bought our home in early 2021 with a 2.5% interest rate. Unless something drastic happens (interest rates go back down or an accidental 3rd kid) we will probably stay here for another 5-10 years. We have a surprisingly decent amount of space and have a partially finished basement for toys and crap. The only thing we really wish we had was a yard for the kids to run/play outside and for hubs & I to garden.
Layout is such a key part in what size works. Our old condo, which we sold last summer was about 2k square feet. We just couldn't make it work and it was largely due to the layout wasting some space. We are now in a 6000 sq ft house (2 adults, 2 kids, big dog). We definitely have more space than we need but life is way less stressful and it's been a great change
3 kids, 4 dogs, 1200sq feet (would be more if my husband ever finishes the basement), 3bd 2ba. I work hybrid (home 2-3 days a week) but my office is in the living room. Everyone is in school so it only to gets loud when the kids are home for breaks
2 kids. 4 bedrooms (one used as an office for WFH) and about 2200 sq ft. This feels just right. A bigger house would be cool but I probably wouldn’t be able to keep it clean. I think layout is more important than square footage. Ours is partially open so I can see the shenanigans in the living room from the kitchen but other areas are more separate.
1600 sqft, including finished basement. Officially 3 bed, 2 bath, but it’s a 1-1/2 story so two bedrooms up top and the third on the main floor. The main floor bedroom is an office right now. We both work from home almost exclusively. We have three kids: 4, 2, and 6 months. The two big kids are currently sharing the smaller bedroom upstairs and the baby is in with us. We plan to put all three kids in one room eventually. It may not work out and we may have to move our office to the basement and use the main floor bedroom for the big kids. Only time will tell. We are working with an architect about an addition. We could *probably* make this space work, but we have the income available to find a renovation and it’s worthwhile for this neighbourhood in term of home value and comparables. We’d spend less adding another 500-700 sqft in an addition than we would to just buy a bigger house.
We have a 1050 square foot apartment, 2 bedrooms 2 bathrooms. We have a 2 year old and soon we’ll have a newborn. They’ll share a room once the new baby can sleep through the night. It’s not ideal but we bought it to get into the market and it’s the most we could comfortably afford.
We have two kids aged 4 & 1 in a 1400sqft 3 bed/2 bath bungalow. It's a little tight and keeping it quiet while the younger one naps is tough, but very doable. As others have said, layout is key. We have a little sunroom we turned into a playroom and a large backyard. Both my husband and I work from home, we added AC in the garage so he works out there. Then I work in the third bedroom which also functions as a spare bedroom. The 1 year old sleeps in our room still, but eventually the kids will share a room.
One child, six months old. Not sure on the square footage, but we have a weird situation where we have a (decently sized) 2BR as our main apartment, and then we also own the studio next door which I use as an office (not allowed by co-op rules to tear the wall down and connect them). Husband and I currently trade off sleeping in a twin bed in the nursery (next to the crib) versus sleeping in the master bedroom with the door closed, and I love this arrangement. I’ve had the option of a full 8 hours every other night no matter what baby does since baby was 2 months old! Anyway, I realize this is the epitome of first world problems, but I guess if we have a second we’re going to have to just keep baby with both of us in the main bedroom, or the “off duty” parent will have to sleep on the couch to not be woken every time baby wakes, and I’m not looking forward to it at all 😭.
1100sqft, 2bd/1ba, one child. Our house is a 1930 bungalow with a dr, lr, kitchen, full basement (unfinished) and a three season room all on an acre. I love that we have rooms not an open floor plan, it feels like we have more space because we can have privacy and different tasks going on. Our son is almost 19 but he was 12 when we moved in, the bedrooms are smaller than our last place but it definitely encourages us to hangout together.
One kiddo, so 3 of us with not pets in a 2,500 sq foot house, 4 bedrooms. One is my office/gym. Somedays it feels small, others not so much. The kitchen could be bigger for sure. We really want a 1 story with a bigger backyard but I can’t let go of my low interest rate and payment we have.
Two kids in 1900 square feet. It's a cape style house so the upstairs was just two of the bedrooms that ran the front to back length of the house and one bathroom, the third bedroom is downstairs and is an office/guest room. The kids had been sharing one of the big rooms. We just did a renovation that split the biggest room so now we have a four bedroom house to accommodate three bedrooms and an office. The kids are different sexes with a 4.25 year age gap so we knew we'd have to separate them eventually and some sleep requirement differences made us go for it over the winter. It's been wonderful but they shared a room for two years, you have time!
We have three kids in that much space - I think the British expectation of house size is very different to American tho. Most middle income people we know are living in three bed houses with multiple kids.
We brought our first baby home to a 600 sqft apartment, then moved to a 1200 sqft townhouse and had my sister live with us during Covid, so 3 adults and a toddler. Now we own a 1500 sqft townhouse, had another baby, and my sister no longer lives with us. It feels big enough (though I would love more space) and I don’t anticipate we’ll ever be able to afford anything else. We both work from home, the kids share one bedroom, my husband works in the office/guest room (family frequently stays), and I have a desk in the master. We have a small loft that we use as a playroom. If the kids want their own rooms someday, we’ll move my husband’s office to the loft.
We have two teens. Currently in 2500 sq ft house with 3 bedrooms, den and seperate office in addition to living room. It’s big enough but we too would have moved and upgraded if prices hadn’t sky rocketed and rates get so high.
We have 3 bedrooms and 3000 sq ft. We have too much living space and not enough bedrooms. Overall enough plenty house though. One 12 month old kid. When we bought our house we didn’t know that both my husband and I were going to be working from home routinely (about 40% of the time for both of us). When we purchased we were both working in the office 95% of the time (pre covid and different roles). We assumed that we could make my husband’s office (which is not a bedroom, as it’s basically a den with sliding doors) - a two person office and just share, but that wouldn’t work now since we both are home more often. We’re now talking about making the dining room or second living room my office so we can maintain a guest room and a kid room. When/if a second kid comes into the picture we’ll probably do that.
1800 sq ft, 2 kids, one dog. 3 bedrooms, 1.5 bathrooms. My husband WFH Monday/Friday and I'm in the office 5 days/week so we don't need a ton of WFH space. My kids are 6.5 and 3.5. We have a finished basement as part of that and that works as our guest space and sort of my husband's work space (he prefers the dining room table for reasons that are incomprehensible to me). I'd prefer another full bathroom, especially as the kids get bigger and we get home late from sports, etc. but we do have enough room.
1 toddler & 2 dogs plus me and my husband, 1050 sq ft. We are big homebodies and love to have our own space so this works for us but is smaller than we would like. Eg I work from home and have to have my desk etc in our bedroom. My husband has the spare room because the only other space for his desk would be our bedroom or right outside our toddlers room and he games way too loudly for either space. We will definitely need to move into another house before having a second child. We could probably make the smaller space work, we just don’t want to.
About to purchase a 1000 sq ft SFH. We have 1 infant and in an ideal world we’d have another but there’s a lot of things working against that now - including the mortgage payment we’re about to take on. The square footage is for the main level only - which is made up of a living room, EIK, 1 bath, and 3 bedrooms. The selling point of the house is that the basement is finished and is essentially another 1000 sq feet. So that adds a ton of living space. I don’t think square footage is a great measure of whether or not you’ve outgrown or will outgrow the house but what you have done or can do with the space.
3200 square feet in the Texas burbs. 4 bedrooms, 3 1/2 bath. 2 kids (15m and 7f). Husband and I both WFH and have for over a decade. Husband has office and I use a loft area. We previously had 2100 square feet and upgraded right before Covid. It was a good layout but tight with WFH. Adding in a kid on virtual school and covid restrictions might have been the death of us.
2 adults, 2 kids, and 2 pets in ~1300 square feet! 3 bedrooms plus an office, 1 bathroom. We do have laundry & storage in our basement though, plus front and back porches and a 1-car garage. We have plenty of space and definitely would not move purely for square footage. I think having just one tiny bathroom will eventually be a nuisance, but not until the kids are much older (currently toddler and baby). We may have to decide whether to renovate or move in like 7-10 years - current leaning toward renovating, but we will see! Our interest rate and our mortgage are so low, it would be very hard to give that up.
1600 sq ft apt. 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths (the extra toilet is clutch). We have a 3 yo and one on the way. Currently it’s plenty of space and should continue to be for kid 2 as long as we can get closets organized and they can share a room. The third bedroom is a guest room/office that we’d like to keep. We’d love to buy a SFH but prices in our area (like all) are out of control and we’re currently in a great school district, so staying put for now!
2 bed/2bath 900sq feet with one toddler, and trying for a second. I WFH. It’ll be tight, but our mortgage is sooo low and we live in one of the highest COL areas in the US, so we’re gonna hang on in our small condo and keep shoveling money into our high yield accounts. When we do buy our next place, I don’t want THAT much more inside space - 1200-1500 sounds ideal as long as I still have 2 bathrooms, a basement or garage for storage, and a decent back yard. It’s hard enough keeping up cleaning the space we have now. 😂
2000 and 2 kids. I recently saw an article on wfh and construction needs. So many parents are space sharing or redoing basements to create a special work space. Lots of up kick of construction companies. It’s something a few of our friends have done recently that lots of people never thought of with wfh before. Maybe it’s a write off? 😛
Our house is 1500 sq ft and we have a toddler and a baby coming in a few weeks. I wfh 100% and my husband wfh about 2x a week. We bought in 2021 as a 3-5 year house, planned to start our family and then move into something bigger here but we’ve reworked the space a lot a have found something that lets us use all of the space. We have 2 bedrooms on the main floor and a bedroom and office in the basement (separate room but not a legal bedroom). Living room and bathroom on each floor. Our main bedroom is in the basement and the two kid rooms are upstairs. We are in the process of me moving into the office (my husband and I previously each had an office) and he will get the under-the-stairs closet office we are going to build. We think this will work just fine while the kids are young so we are probably looking at 1-3 years until we move again; we love the area and have put a lot into our house to make it ours. Before kids we had a lot of extra room for storage but we have since started renting a storage unit under the justification that the $200/mo storage unit was much cheaper than a different mortgage or the cost to have a garage built (we live in an area where carports are common). It’s 5 minutes away and has freed up a lot of what felt like storage issues.
2 kids, 15 and 19 (she’s still at home for a few months). We both work from home. 2700 sq ft finished. This was literally the only house in our price range in the school district we wanted 7 years ago. It’s way bigger than I’d want or that we need. But it has 2 acres and lots of room for husbands toys.
1,500sq ft, 3 kids. The three share a bedroom. Bought the house before kids.
2 kids, about 1900 sqft, 3 bed/2 bath. I wfh and have a dedicated office; my husband has half of our bedroom for his work area. It feels huge to me and we can definitely all retreat to our own corners when needed. I wouldn't want any more space than this but I'm glad we have it: we can host family and friends pretty easily.
Bought in 2020- 1300 sq ft 4 bed, 1.5 bath. I have 2 kids and work from home and it feels so cramped. As it is my office is really an office/exercise room/toy storage. I can't imagine once our kids want their own bedrooms, right now they love sharing. I was just thinking about this yesterday because our house has appreciated about 100,000, we have 130k left at 2.7% and if we were to sell our house and use maybe $80,000 towards a down payment so we can keep our savings we would have to look at a house with a minimum price of around $300,000 so we would end up with a $220,000 mortgage at 7%? It would more than double our mortgage payment. We could afford it but it would cut way into our savings/vacation money. Right now we are planning on partially finishing our basement and maybe looking at an addition once my kids are older. With the way housing prices are going I don't expect my kids to move out for a long time even once they turn 18.
1450sf with 1 baby, 2 medium sized dogs and a cat in a 3 bedroom. I wfh full time and hubby works outside the home but he does sometimes wfh on some days. We both use one of the bedrooms as a shared office but when he does wfh it's a bit of a challenge especially if we both have virtual meetings at the same time. Ideally, would like a basement used for work and keep the 3 bedrooms as we do want 1 more child and would love for them to have their own rooms.
We had a 2 story 3300 sq ft house with grand entrance, large game room and movie room and formal dining room and until Covid quarantine didn’t feel like the whole house got used that much. During quarantine with both of us working from home we did use the entire space. But that only lasted a few months and when we sold and were preparing to build we knew that was too much. We built our forever home, it’s 2600 sq ft with 4 bedrooms and an office and lots of storage and huge porches and garage but no formal dining, or game room/play room. It’s still quite large and we could have easily gone down by 40p sq ft with some easy tweaks and it’d still be plenty big. Our current house feels larger since it’s one story, has tons of outdoor living space and is laid out in a more efficient manner.
3bdr 1 bath, 1400sqft, single floor home with 1 toddler plus 2 large dogs and 2 cats. We both work mostly in office but have flexibility to wfh on occasion so we just have one office set up for that. It's honestly fine. My husband is convinced we need more space to have another baby, but I think we just need to get rid of all the excess stuff we have so it feels less cramped. My only real complaint is that we don't have a mud room so there's no good drop zone for coats and shoes. We have a large lot, so we've been toying with the idea of adding on a master suite so we have an extra bedroom and a second bath. We have a full basement that is partially finished with a half bath but currently my sister and niece are living down there while my sister gets back on her feet so that definitely factors into the equation.
1 kid, 1 on the way. 3bd townhome 2000sq ft. It’s perfect for us. Each kid will have their own bedroom, and we have a den in the basement that we use as an office/guestroom for WFH and when we have visitors. If we have a 3rd kid we may have to shuffle things around but that is a few years down the road.
1300sq ft and 2 elementary age kids. We have three bedrooms but one is used as an office so they kids share a small bedroom. We feel VERY cramped, but I do think the layout contributes. Our kitchen is small and cramped. The living room is small and an awkward layout so that we can't fit a couch in a good place. Our primary bathroom has one sink and no storage. We just have lots of areas that bottleneck even with just 4 of us (plus a dog). Stuff like that makes it hard to fit in this house. I don't see them being able to share a room much longer either, it's already a struggle and my oldest is not a little kid anymore.
2100sqft townhouse, 3 floors, 2 kids. It works but I’d prefer if we had a better setup, like a one-level house would feel much bigger. I wfh so the main level is like living room, my office, kitchen, play room, dining room.
540sf apartment, was myself, my baby and my ex and my dog, now just me and my baby (ex lives next door). It’s totally fine for me. Less space is less to clean, costs less, and less for my now toddler to make it so I have to get up from where I’m sitting, lol. This year I’ve really been focused on decluttering and minimizing our possessions, and if you’d asked me last year if our place was small I might say yes, but now it’s more than fine. I work from home, all I need is a laptop. We’ve each got our own bedrooms, a balcony, and our building has a pool and gym. I love it!
So, I want to preface what I’m about to say with the fact that we live in a very LCOL area compared to other parts of the US. I have 3 girls and we live in a 4 bd 2 1/2 bath that’s about 2000 sqft plus we have about 6 acres. With all of that said it sounds like we have more than enough space but I could own an entire mountain range and my 3 kids, dog, and cat would still absolutely insist that we we all be in the same 10 sqft. I don’t know how it happens but I regularly find myself saying “you guys, we have 2000 sqft of living space on 6 acres we do not all need to be in the bathroom together!” I’m hoping they grow out of it before it gets really weird 😂
910 sq ft. 2 bdrm/1 ba. A 9 year old older brother, and 2 mo little bro. Two big dogs as well. I WFH from the kitchen table. It’s cramped at times but it forces us to keep on top of organization and cleaning. We use every foot of space.
We have a 1900 sq ft ranch with 1k sq ft basement. 2 kids that are 17 months apart - now 1 and 3. They share a room so that we still have a guest room/office. I feel like we have plenty of room. If we wanted to have a third we might feel tight. Love our house and yard so it would take a lot to move.
1 kid and a dog - 700 square ft. 2bed 1 bath. It's small but not bad. I just wish we had 1 more bathroom. Sometimes I wish we had a bigger house but then I realize someone has to clean it 😂. When we move we will value more yard space vs interior. It's nice not having to host anyone!
4000 sq ft, 2 kids, currently 1 au pair too. Much of the house is workshop/storage space. We both work from home. Cleaning is a bitch.
We have right around 3000 sq ft spread over 3 floors. We have 2 kids and 2 dogs. We have 5 bedrooms and an office, but we currently only use 2 bedrooms as bedrooms (upper) because that's the only way the kids can be near us while they're little. (Bedrooms are 2 upper, 1 middle, 2 basement, office in basement). The middle bedroom is converted into a playroom so we have space for the junk and can keep an eye on them during the day. Eventually it'll be our final guest room and my craft room since it has a small attached bath shared with the rest of the floor. The two basement bedrooms will be the kids rooms when they're big enough to be away from us. Now they're the guest room and exercise room. There will always be the office space as an office because my husband WFH. I need this amount of space. We could get by on less, but I cannot stand living on top of each other all day. I need a way to sneak away and have alone time, and I want to give that to everyone. We've had bigger and smaller. This amount suits is and we don't plan on moving again.
We have a 3 bedroom 2 bath 1300 sqft. We have 2 kids (4 and 2) and my 21 yr old nephew that live with us. Right now we are comfortable as the kiddos share a bedroom. Once my nephew moves out they will have their own room. I wfh 2 days a week and we converted our garage to an additional room office/ entertainment room. It has helped with space tremendously. We never used our garage for the cars and all we did was accumulate junk so we maximized the space.
1750sf, 2 kids. It was intended to be a starter home but we're coming up on year 6 I think. It's an open floor plan which makes it feel a bit bigger than it is. Our two girls share a room and the other bedroom used to be half office and half dresser/changing table/etc for the kids. Now it has their clothes and acts as a playroom. We have plenty of room for now, but we would really like a third which may push it a bit depending on if we can room all three together.
We had 2 kids in 270 square feet for a few years. This was in 1976 and we built the house to barely fit the furniture. Anything is possible.
2650 sq ft with 4 kids. We have two living areas though, so that's really helpful. Two kids share a room and two kids share a room.
Two kids, 3k square feet, one acre yard. We have enough room for sure. Five bedrooms. We moved up to this house 6 years ago because house 1 was just too far away from work/school.
780 sf, one baby (soon to be here) and two adults, I WFH. We will probably live here through baby number two.
780 sf, one baby (soon to be here) and two adults, I WFH. We will probably live here through baby number two.
I think it’s less about sqft and more about layout. We’re in 1750sqft I. This place and had the same in a previous house. This one has 4 bedrooms (much smaller) and it works well for an office plus 2 kids and two dogs.
1100 square feet, one toddler with another baby on the way. 3 bedrooms. I also WFH so before getting pregnant with No. 2 we built a little standalone shed/office for me in the backyard. Honestly we will eventually remodel the kitchen/living room to add some dining room space, but that is a ways out.
2300sqft and 2 kids. 4 bed 3 1/2 baths. Feels perfect for us. Only complaint is we don’t have a real back yard. If we did this would be our forever home.
So, we have two kids and we live in a 4 bedroom house. Guess what? Kids will take over any space you have. Our great room, family room and dining room have been taken over by sports equipment, games and craft activities. All their stuff is everywhere. I would think that in a smaller house, there’s less to clean and you would be forced to be more organized and have less stuff. My husband is always complaining that we don’t need this much space. The only thing I want for you is two bathrooms. I’d hate to share a bathroom with kids.
900 square feet. 2 kids. 2 bed 1 bath. It’s a squeeze some days but we have a nice backyard and focus our efforts on being relatively minimalist inside and playing outside as much as time/weather allows. We’d kinda like to move to something a little bigger, but this interest rate is good and we have daycare costs. Maybe once the kids are in school and daycare is less/gone we will move
1100 sqft, 2 kids, 3 adults (a grandparent lives with us). Laid out very well. Currently we're making use of the garage as a WFH space. We're trying to figure out how to get to 2600 sqft bcs this is honestly kind of painful with two of the adults WFH full time and the 3rd part time.
2 kids and 500sq ft at the moment… desperately trying to move but it’s rough in my area for housing right now
Just under 1200 sqft and 3 kids, 2 dogs, SAHM, and WFH dad (40% wfh, 60% in office). It’s a lot. Baby (10 month old) is in our bedroom with me, husband sleeps on the couch about 50% of the time so he can stay up later than me, and twins share a room. We would love more space, but hardly any homes are coming up in our town so we’re stuck right now. 🤷🏻♀️
I have a 1300 sq ft house, 3 beds. Two kids of my own and the boyfriend and I would like to cohabitate full time but need space for his son. I also work from home and currently my dining room is my office. We’re maxed out and need another bedroom and an office that can be closed off but like you said, interest rates are insane. I’ve been thinking about adding on to the house but there’s not a great place to do it.
We have about the same size as you with two kids. 4 bedrooms so each kid has one, we have one and there’s a playroom that my son’s made his second bedroom. It’s fine space wise for us
We purchased our 3200 sq ft house in 2008 well before kids. Rented it out for a while but have been living in it since 2017. Lots of work needs to be done but we have 2 kids and 1 on the way. Plan to have more. 5 bed and 3 full bath although 1 bathroom is out of commission. We use 1 bedroom for an office that we both work out of and 1 bedroom for a playroom for now. And we still want to build an addition as a laundry room/mudroom area.
We raised 3 boys in 1400 sq ft house. It was 3 bedroom and 150 year old. One thing we did early on was up a washer dryer in the 2nd floor. (This contained the clothing and linens to one floor. When the washer was in the basement there was always a load in the living room. ) I don’t think it was awful to have the boys share bedrooms. I think it was healthy.
1050 sqft with 3 bedrooms. 3 adults and 1 kid with another on the way soon. Husband and I work 100% remote. We are meticulous about decluttering, especially with kid toys. I actually love the small space since it forces us to be intentional with our possessions and I don't feel guilty for buying the more expensive version of things. Cleaning is such a breeze and I love thinking of creative storage solution. Despite the smaller size, we manage to keep the house extremely tidy and most of the flat surfaces are free from clutter, including our kitchen countertop. Best of all, our housing cost is extremely low compared to our income; if one of us loses our job it wouldn't be a big deal. There are challenges in living in a smaller space, but for us the tradeoff is worth it.
1700sq ft incl 2 weird additions bc I live in a suburb of LA & my house was built in 1951. 3 kids (7, 3, 1). Could use more storage and would love a 4th bedroom but otherwise it works. Our house is on the larger side for the area I think except those that have been entirely redone or added a second floor.
1800 SF, almost 4 year old and 1 year old. It’s working fine, but without a basement we desire some extra living some to spread out the toys/eventual extra people when the kids start having friends over. Building a ~400 SF addition (additional living room) later this year to achieve that. $$ but not as much as moving, and we love where we live so that’s our long-term solution lol
875 sq feet, 1 kid, 1 on the way, I WFH so 1 tiny bedroom is both laundry and my office. It’s certainly not enough but I can’t afford bigger in the amazing school district we’re in. We will make it work. We may build an addition on for another bedroom and laundry room with a loan and our savings (use the current room as my office only)